


it was spring(and i was tired)

by BadWolf256



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:28:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 57,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24222814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadWolf256/pseuds/BadWolf256
Summary: Elena Gilbert spent her whole life running away. But home is closer than everyone thinks that it is, even if coming back means facing them. All of those things just kill you. All of those things that aren't real. And all of those things which she'd always needed, and never - not ever - known. Elijah, she thinks, might just be one of those.
Relationships: Elena Gilbert/Damon Salvatore, Elena Gilbert/Elijah Mikaelson, Elena Gilbert/Elijah Mikaelson/Damon Salvatore
Comments: 5
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> **Author’s Note: I’ve wanted to write an Elejah story forever. But it never seemed like the right time. And I never felt like I could do justice to the relationship that I wanted Elejah to have, which has been so beautifully portrayed so many times by far better writers than me. However, since having time on my hands what with quarantine, I decided to take a stab at a story that’s been in my thoughts for awhile. This is NOT an all human AU - vampires very much exist in this universe, and Elijah very much is one. However, this story isn’t really about vampires, as I hope you’ll all see. It’s about a pairing that I don’t think got that much justice, and one way their story could have played out. I hope that you all enjoy my take on Elena, Elijah, and Mystic Falls, and that you are all doing safe and well throughout these trying times.**
> 
> **P.S: This story partly came about after listening to Mary Lambert’s 2019 album _Grief Creature._ I listened to this album so much while writing this that I feel like I would be cheating if I didn’t say to go listen to it at some point! **
> 
> **As always, I don’t own TVD. It only keeps me awake.**

There is nothing to do in the city. Not when you’re just coming home. But she doesn’t think about that. She is lackluster, liplocked, fastidious. That’s how she learned to survive. Seven hours of cross-country travel, reading a book on the plane, and still Elena feels nothing. It’s better than feeling, she thinks. Somehow she doubts that anyone else would agree. And that is the problem with it, coming home - there is nothing for her to come home to, and nobody to disagree. Only the envelope, stuffed in her front jacket pocket, gilded and golden with cursive that seems sickly-sweet. Reminding her that, despite everything, she is in fact still a Gilbert. Still, through it all, one of _them._ She’s kept it with her, and all of the others besides. It was harder than she’d thought at first, to lug all that history behind her. At the time, it had almost seemed wrong, donating it all away. But like _hell_ was Carol Lockwood taking her best inspiration. The Founders Council can stuff it. Still, thinks Elena, maybe it’s all for the best. 

A chance to come _home._ Really, it’s an excuse. And how bad could it really be, home? Sure, they all hate her, unless things have miraculously, somehow, changed. But Elena Gilbert can live with herself. 

That’s what she’s done every day. 

There is nobody waiting for her when she steps her way off of the plane, only the roar of the hot, cooling engines, and the rush of lemonade air. It tastes like home - that stale and stuffy complacency which marks everything Founder’s Day, and she finds it, quite frankly, refreshing. She’s only surprised that it’s carried so far. She wonders if driving will look like it did when she left; if the thrill and the danger of being somebody will all blur away into dread. She lingers here longer than most people would, but she finds that she can’t leave just yet - it means something, this. Not being Alaric Saltzman’s strange, disturbed pity case. She lets it soak into her skin, hoping, like sunscreen, that it might protect her somewhat. Wanders the gates and the magazine kiosk, buying herself a new sweatshirt. She takes her time with exploring; not caring, much, if it means that she gets there too late. It would be just like her, she thinks, not to show up on time. And nobody, really, will be able to say they’re not glad that she wasn’t there. Which is why, thinks Elena, she hears them all talk in her head. It’s a chaos, inside of her. She isn’t half certain that Alaric won’t throw her out on the street. It’s when she reaches the smoking room that she realizess Jenna’s likely been buried by now, and she’s forgotten her cigarettes. 

And she knows how strange she must look; some crazed, forlorn woman staring out through the glass. It’s what she did on the plane; watched everything underneath her and wished she could be going back. It gives her more time to think on how she has ruined their lives; a familiar subject, to her. Unlike the sure, steady warmth of the hand that taps on her shoulder. She almost won’t turn to face him; something about him, paradoxically, nearly reminds her of Damon. But in the end, the regret necessitates rapid consumption of nicotine smoke, and so she whirls to face him. He is nothing like what she’d expected. His hair is combed smartly, long-but-not-too-long, parted just in the middle. He has inquisitive eyes, for a stranger, and he might be the only person that she’s ever seen who wears a suit as regular daywear, assuming that that’s what it is. _You should go for it, ‘Lena,_ she thinks she hears Caroline say, and forces it down like black bile. Suddenly she wants to leave. 

“I’m sorry,” He tells her, and she wonders if he can read it all on her, “I was only wondering if you might -” 

“Yes,” Elena says, “Please.” 

He smiles at her - a soft smile borne out of what she can only call patience - and lights a cigarette for her. He smokes something strong, she can tell, but nothing that she can’t handle; and the burn of it calls like a friend. 

“Thank you,” She tells him, “Feel free to ignore me -” 

“Elijah Smith.” 

It is, she thinks, a thoroughly day-wear suit name. 

“Smith?” She asks him, catching herself on the common.

“My pen-name,” He tells her, “I’m writing a book. And you -”

“I’m going back home,” Says Elena, “Not that I’m wanted there, much.” 

“I’m sorry to hear that,” He tells her, sounding as if he is, and Elena finds herself shrugging. 

“It isn’t your fault,” She tells him, “I kind of did it myself.” 

She vaguely thinks that she should stop talking to him - she has at least three driving hours ahead, and the day isn’t getting much lighter. Besides, he’s a stranger, someone that she doesn’t know. An _author,_ and probably well-established. Instead, she drags on her cigarette, and finds herself asking him: 

“What’s your book about, then, Elijah?” 

“The history of small towns in Virginia,” He tells her. If he’s bothered by it, Elijah doesn’t let on. “There’s so much folklore in them that nobody seems to remember. I feel it’s a shame to just waste it.” 

She laughs - can’t help it, really, because if he only _knew -_

“Something funny?” He asks her. 

“No,” She tells him, “Well - yes. I’m _from_ a small town in Virgina, and trust me, nobody’s forgotten.” 

“Really?” He asks her, “Which one?” 

“Mystic Falls,” Says Elena, flicking the ashes all down, remembering Jenna’s voice. “It’s a… conservative kind of place. Founder’s Day’s coming up, so they called all the old families in, and - You’re staring,” She says, as she sees it, “What, do you think I’m a liar?” 

“No,” He says, “No, I just - Mystic Falls?” 

And it hits her, then, all at once - It figures that she’d meet somebody who tries to be ind and then the whole thing would get ruined. She has not the time nor energy to discern why, exactly, she cares. But she knows that she already does. That maybe she’s lived for these small moments of kindness, having forgone so much when she left. She could start laughing, or crying, or any of the above. Something tells her that he wouldn’t mind. Yet Elena finds that she’s _curious_ , about him. 

“What do you know?” She asks him. 

“Well,” Says Elijah, “I know that Mystic Falls is steeped in rumors of the supernatural. There have been dozens of ‘animal attacks’ of unknown origin reported over the years, and there are multiple historical accounts of the supposed massacre of a hundred witches from the northern Massachusetts area close to the outskirts of town. There are other things, too, that people say point to otherwordly occurences.” 

“So what?” Asks Elena, “Your job is to write about vampires?” 

“My job,” He says, “Is to discuss what’s really behind it, and why that conclusion was formed.” 

“Have you ever considered,” She asks him, “That vampires might be real?” 

He cocks his head at her, and Elena looks down at her feet. Her cigarette’s almost done, and she wishes that she could ask for another. But now she’s gone and she’s done it. Elijah must think she’s insane. 

“Yes,” He says, shocking her back into looking at him, “I’ve considered that explanation.” 

“And?” Asks Elena. 

“While I agree with those who take stock in it, people who want to be credible don’t write vampire books.” 

Elena snorts. 

“You know,” She tells him, “I never thought of it that way.” 

“Most people don’t,” Says Elijah, and she remembers the first part of it -

“You believe in them?” She asks, “Vampires?” 

“No less than anyone else. It certainly explains a lot. Do you?” 

“Not in the slightest,” She tells him, “But - I am a Gilbert.” 

“Ah,” Says Elijah, nodding, she thinks, to himself. 

“My ancestor, Jonathan Gilbert,” She tells him, “He wrote all these journals, way back during the war. He talks about all of that stuff. Vampires. Werewolves. The whole shebang.” 

“Do you have them?” He asks her, “These journals? They sound like a fascinating read.” 

“Not with me,” She tells him, shaking her head. “I, um. I’m not really staying for long.” 

“Whyever not?” Asks Elijah. 

“It’s complicated,” She tells him.

“From what I’ve heard,” He tells her, “Mystic Falls is a very tight-knit community. The Founding Families are quite close to one another. If you are a Gilbert - “ 

“I was,” Says Elena, “I don’t think I am, anymore. Not to the others, at least.” 

It’s not something that she had expected herself to admit, but saying it, somehow, feels right. She hopes that he will not press her, because - Because now she is crying, and his hand’s on her shoulder again, tracing the dip of her arm, and pressing something else into her cold, clammy palm. A white, lacy handkerchief that looks like something out of a Jane Austin novel. 

“I’m sorry,” She tells him, wiping off tears and no small amount of mascara. “I can replace it, or -” 

“No need,” Says Elijah. “It does sound complicated, Ms. Gilbert. I’m sorry for causing you any unecessary pain.” 

“It isn’t,” She tells him, needing Elijah to know. “Everything that I’m feeling right now? I brought it all down on myself. I don’t ask anyone to take the blame for me on that.” 

“Mm,” Says Elijah, “But still.” 

She notices, then - he feels the same way as her. About soemthing, she thinks, and it makes her feel reassured. She takes a new look at Elijah as her tears begin to evaporate, seeing the way that he looks, and the way that he looks at her. There’s compassion inside of his eyes. She hardly _remembers_ compassion. And there’s softness to him, though she can tell he’s hard angles. She likes the illusion of having a friendly conversation. She thinks it might end far too soon. 

“Where are you from?” Asks Elena, “And if you have research to do -” 

“New Orleans,” He tells her. “Before that, multiple places. I was actually thinking, much the same was as you. Though it seems - not about the same things.” 

“No,” Says Elena, “Not about the same things.” 

“I was thinking,” He tells her, “That nobody cares about places like this, anymore. There are so many strangers, Ms. Gilbert.” 

“Like _Eleanor Rigby,_ ” She tells him, noting his look of surprise. “It was one of my dad’s favorite songs. He used to play if for us every morning, just to remind my brother and I that we were doing alright.” 

“He sounds very kind,” Says Elijah. 

“I guess you could say it that way.” 

“What way would you say it?” He asks her. 

“I don’t know,” Says Elena, “He was a bit of a liar. But everyone’s like that, I think.” She knows that he caught on the _was_ ; she can see him mulling it over, and thanks God that he doesn’t ask. And she knows that it’s changed something, sharing that part of herself, though she cannot quite yet tell what. 

“Elena,” He asks, “Would you like to accompany me?” 

“Where?” Asks Elena, hating herself for how breathless she sounds and the way that he’s figured her name. 

“Home,” Says Elijah, “Where else?” 

“I don’t know,” She tells him, “New Orleans sounds nice, but I have to do this Founder’s Ball thing, and there’s so much I have to get done -” 

“Your home,” He tells her, “Not mine.” 

“Oh,” Elena says. “Right.” _Your home_ , he’d called it. He really has no idea. There was a time - not too many long years ago, when she would’ve done anything still in her power to call Mystic Falls home again. But those days are far past her now. What will he think of her home, she wonders, and what will he thinks about her, when he learns all the things she can’t say? Is it worth three golden hours of knowing somebody new? Elena wants to say no, but her instincts are talking instead. 

“That would be nice,” Says Elena. “Are you sure that it isn’t a problem?” 

“Not at all,” Says Elijah, “As long as you don’t mind facing inquiry?” 

“I think I can manage,” She tells him. 

“Wonderful,” Says Elijah, “We should-” 

“Yes,” She tells him, not hesitating on it. _You don’t know him, Elena_ , some part of her reminds herself, but it seems very inconsequential. She feels like she knows him. Feels like she’s known him for years, not only a few, fleeting minutes. And feeling it spurs her on. He’s a good leader, she thinks. He walks ahead like he already knows that she’ll follow. And, to his credit, she does. He is, she realizes, well-off. He drives a Bugati and probably flew in first class. And he is old school: He holds the door open for her, and he looks surprised, for the very first time, by the lack of noticeable luggage. 

“I meant it,” She says, “When I said I’m not staying for long.” 

Elijah makes good on his promise to quiz her. Sometime around the first hour, though, she tires of talking of home. It makes her sad, and sorrowed, and unmistakeably anxious. Though she would never admit it, she feels like she needs to throw up. She could swear that this man has a sixth sense, because one minute he’s chasing a story about the Forbes’s police career, and the next his hand’s on her knee. His touch is as warm as it was in the airport, but it isn’t that cold in his car. 

“Elena,” He asks, “Am I making you anxious?” 

“No,” She says, “It’s not you. It’s jsut - I don’t like to talk about home.” 

Her voice sounds impossibly small, and she knows that she’s crying again. This time, it’s not even crying. It is all of these memories, hounding at her. The smell of Damon’s cologne. Long nights spent sleeping at Bonnie’s. Jenna doing her hair up for Mystic Falls, and drinking straight vodka with Matt. It is all of these things and everything else, and Elena cannot say a word. It is sobbing, she thinks, and it fills up the car like a waterfall, thick and hot and every shade in between. 

“Elena,” He says, but she doesn’t respond. And she feels, without seeing, his hand on her starting to rub. It brings her such comfort as she’s never known, yet he is a stranger to her, and this makes her cry all the more, until she is swept by the weeping somewhere that she’s never been. It is almost a vision to her, but it is a memory, still. Jeremy still looks so _young. I have a girlfriend,_ he tells her. It wasn’t Matt’s sister, this time. He is leaning against Jenna’s counter, that counter they used to talk by, and he’s grown so much in the last year their mom wouldn’t recognize him. He’s lanky, and just getting out of his drug phase, and - _God_ , she thinks, he’s so sad all the time. _Elena,_ he tells her, _You know that you’re a good sister._ _I’m not, though,_ she’s thinking now. _Look what I’ve_ done _to you._ She’s alone in a car with a stranger. For all that she knows he might kill her. And still it is better than facing the people she left. How fucked up, she wonders, is that? She hears his voice then, Elijah. There’s a lilt of an accent to it. He’s been talking to her the whole time. Innocent things, or horrible things, or things that dont’ matter at all. Elena really can’t tell. But she catches teh end of his sentence. 

“ - make you whatever you think you are,” He is saying, “And trust me, Elena, I know. I know what it’s like to feel as if you’re not wanted.” 

“Everyone says it gets easier,” She chokes out, on the tail end of a sob. 

“They told me that too,” Says Elijah. “I wish I could tell you the same.” 

“I don’t,” She says, a little too fiercely, maybe, but it is the truth. She _doesn’t_ want him to say it. There’s nothing Elena wants less in the world than to hear someone say that again. She would rather jump off a bridge. Focuses, now, on his hand running races on her. Settles herself into that. He touches her just like he knows her; just like he wants to be there. 

“I hate going home,” Says Elena, once her breathing has evened. “You don’t know what it’s like there, Elijah, I -” 

“It’s okay,” He says, “It’s alright.” 

“I don’t know what to tell you about it. I can’t - I _can’t_ tell you about it, you know? But it isn’t - it’s not personal, it’s just so hard to explain. It’s like - my family’s such a mess, and nobody told me a word. I spent so much of my life hating them all instead of being thankful for them, and I didn’t - I never thought it would happen. I never thought they’d be _gone._ ” There. She has said them. The words that she’d promised never to speak aloud. “They’re gone, Elijah,” She tels him, “And I was the person who lived. Me. Elena. The fuck-up. It should’ve been somebody else.” 

“You know,” Says Elijah, “I think that I disagree.” 

“What?” She asks, half incredulous, half something else she can’t place. “You don’t know me,” She tells him, “You don’t know the things that I’ve done.” 

“When did you lose them?” He asks her. It brings Elena up short. She has a retort on the edge of her tongue: _I don’t want to talk about that._ But maybe, just maybe, she does. It would be so easy, surrounded by warmth and _Elijah,_ who for some reason refuses to judge her, to say all the things that she hasn’t put strength to before. “It helps,” He tells her, “To talk.” 

“Not if you’re someone like me.” 

“Elena,” He tells her, “I don’t want to push you on this. I am - I am aware that we don’t know each other. But I think it would help you to talk, and I’ve heard I have very good instincts.” 

“Instincts?” She asks him. “My first instinct was to run,” She says, dropping her head low and loud. “It was the middle of winter, I was eighteen years old. I lived with my boyfriend, and he didn’t like me at all. He had his own things going on. And he had this brother, this absolute _creep_ of a brother - I felt like I just had to _leave._ It wasn’t even the first time I’d done it.” 

“Where did you go?” Asks Elijah. He’s gone just as low as she’s gone, but softer. Gentler, she thinks, somehow. 

“My mother’s,” She tells him, “I went to go live with my mother.” 

“Where were you living before?” 

“My Aunt’s,” Says Elena, “Other people, before her. Like I said, we were messed up.” 

“So was mine,” Says Elijah, “My family. My siblings and I - we don’t get along very well.” 

‘Talking about it,” She asks him, “Did you ever do that, Elijah?” 

His silence, she thinks, is as good of an answer as any. 

“Do you know,” He asks her, “Why I started writing this book? I used to think that I’d figure it out someday soon. But the days kept coming, and the answer never appeared. Sometimes we do things because they’re what we need to do; not because they’re what we want.” 

“Like fate,” She says, “Versus free will.” 

“More than that, even,” He tells her. He sounds so full of the passion of it. She could listen to him talk forever. 

“What could be more than fate?” 

“Predestiny,” Says Elijah. She’s heard about it, but she wants to hear it from him. “It’s an old principle, developed in post-reformation European religions, specifically by the Calvinists in Geneva. The idea that God has already chosen who’s going to heaven and hell. It’s determined for you from the moment you’re born, and from that moment you can’t ever change it. If you’re destined for hell, then you’re going to hell. If you’re destined for heaven, you’re going to heaven. To them, it was a parameter. But I’ve always thought that there’s beauty in it; when you’re already destined, you can choose whatever you’d like.” 

“Is that why you talked to me?” Asks Elena. 

“That,” Says Elijah, “Was entirely your own fault.” 

Elena flinches. 

“You looked like you needed somebody,” He tells her, “And it’s been a very long time since I let myself do that, Elena. I wanted to do it for you. I didn’t intend to be cruel.” 

“I get it,” She says, “Just - reminded me of someone else.” 

_I don’t mean to be cruel,_ he had said, _But I cannot_ fucking _believe you. Elena, you could’ve_ died. _Why the fuck would you risk all of that?_

_What, a world without Gilberts? I don’t know, why do you think?_

“What’s your real name?” She asks on a whim, “You said that Elijah Smith was a penname. I only wondered if… you might want to tell me your real one.” 

Elijah smirks at her. Gentle, still, but a bit more pronounced than he has been. 

“Later,” He tells her. 

“You’re so sure of that,” Says Elena, “What if I lose track of you?” 

“You might,” He says, “But I know I certainly won’t. People like you are hard to forget, when you’ve known as many as I have.” 

Elena won’t think about that. She’s tired, she realizes now, and all she wants is to sleep. So that’s what she does; she closes her eyes and she is awash in sensation. The feel of the road beneath them. The purr of it as it flows through the seatbelt to her. There is the threat of the water in it, but Elena feels that threat is distant. Elijah is touching her, still; and she remembers something Alaric said to her once, when she was fifteen years old and helped him, sometimes, grading papers. _I shouldn’t be letting you do this,_ he’d told her, _But what the hell, it can’t hurt._

 _Everything hurts, Mr. Saltzman,_ she’ told him. Time’s only made it more true. She doesn’t know what she’s doing this for. There is nothing left for her here. Nobody left for her, here, and some stranger she met doesn’t count. It might have been just yesterday that Stefan Salvatore left her, less human than anything she’d ever seen, and still not willing to give her just one more second chance. _You don’t deserve it,_ he’d told her, _Do you know what you’re doing to me? You could’ve shut up and let us all help you, but no - Saint Elena the martyr just had to go off on her own._ He had hit her that day - she had thought he would never do that. The bruise is still purple and blue on her cheek whenever she looks in the mirror. But she isn’t dreaming of Stefan; it would be better that way. She is dreaming of sliding down walls. The hot taste of coppery blood. And she is dreaming of hands less kind than Elijah’s, hands that demanded of her. Bourbon and smoked, polished wood. _Elena, Elena, Elena,_ he’d told her, _How many years have you known me? You know that I’d never hurt you._ She still remembers the day that he rolled into town; a twenty-four year old man who nobody she knew had met. Everyone thought he was handsome. Everyone thought he was charming. But none of them knew him at all. 

And in her dreams, he is picking her up from the Grill. There’s an alley beside where the lovers go out to smoke. That’s how it was, Damon’d told her, in the town where he had grown up. She can’t imagine it like that, but what does she know about life? She’s yougn, and her Aunt’s sleeping out with some boyfriend that she doesn’t know. She feels a bit dangerous, too. She ripped holes in her jeans on a Vicki Donovan dare, and she’s done her hair way up high. She wonders if she looks pretty to him, when he looks at her body like that. She isn’t quite drunk, but she isn’t quite sober, and Damon’s not taking her home. 

_I wanted you tell you,_ he’s saying, _That you could do better than him._

She is sick and tired of hearing about all of this, but it isn’t like she has a choice. She is stuck there with Damon. He won’t turn the radio on. 

_What do you think I should do, then?_ She asks him. It tastes like leftover whiskey. _I think you should fuck me instead,_ he had said, and grinned at her just like the devil. They’re not at the Grill, and they’re not at the Boarding House, either. They are nothing and nowhere at all, and Elena is kissing a Salvatore brother. His hands are rough in her hair. His lips are hard on her lips. He fights her on it and gets one good bite out of her. _You can’t tell my brother,_ he tells her. He’s moving on her, and she can’t tell if she’s pressed to his length or the resolute gearshift. Then his hand is over her mouth, and it tastes like ichor and silk. _What would your mother think now?_ Damon asks her, _If she could see you with me?_

 _I don’t know,_ she had said, _I don’t want to, Damon, I -_

“Hush,” Says the man who is driving, “And open your eyes. Welcome back, sweet Elena. You’re home.”

 _Home,_ thinks Elena, and, after that thought, _Elijah._

“Look,” She tells him, “You don’t have to worry about - any of that. If I was being loud, or - or anything, please just forget it.” 

He looks vaguely affronted at her. 

“You were having a nightmare, Elena” He tells her, “Of course I’m concerned about you.” 

“It wasn’t about anything.” 

It’s nowhere near confident, but other things take up her tiem. There it is, right in front of her face. Damon Salvatore’s house. 

“Why are we here?” Asks Elena. Her hands go up to the lock, and she finds herself scratching the window, throwing herself at it _hard._ The Boarding House looks just the same, as old and as stately as it ever was, and Elijah is pulling her back. Spinning her to him while loosing her seatbelt and desperately searching her face. 

“You have history here,” He surmises. 

“Yeah,” She tells him, “I do.” 

“The Salvatore’s offered an interview,” Says Elijah, “I didn’t realize you -” 

“It’s fine,” Says Elena, “Really, Elijah, it’s fine. I just - Wish that you would’ve said something.” There is a silence between them that Elena finds she dislikes. It makes her want things with him that she knows she shouldn’t yet want. “It’s okay,” She tells him, trying to sound like it is, “Do your interview. I can walk.” 

“No,” He says. It is swift and without retribution.

“Elijah,” She tells him, “I really appreciate this. But I don’t live that far away. You shouldn’t be late. Damon _hates_ it when people are late.” 

“Does he scare you?” Elijah asks her, and Elena turns so that he cannot look in her eyes. 

“Please don’t ask about that.” 

“I -” 

“He’ll do wonders for you, Elijah. You need him as part of the book. He knows everything that you can know, if you’re talking about Mystic Falls. You’ve already done more than enough.” 

He nods, and Elena breathes out. This breath, she thinks, is relief - there is nothing she’d thought she could say, for a moment, to get her away from this place. But now she is leaving, and life will be life once again. Normal, unbearable life. She doesn’t know where she’s going, still hasn’t gotten that far, but it won’t be anywhere near here. The house - Alaric pry sold it. For all that she knows they’re both _gone._ But it’s better than nothing, she thinks. 

“Will I see you, Elena?” He asks her. 

“I don’t think you’ll want to,” She says. 

“I very much doubt that,” Elijah says, “But that wasn’t the question I asked.” 

Elena sneaks a look forwards. There’s nobody yet at the window, but she knows Damon knows that they’re here. He’s always been knowing like that. 

“Elijah,” She tells him, “Are you going to be at the party?” 

“I was invited,” He says. 

“Then yes,” Says Elena, “You’ll see me.” 

“I’m glad,” He says, and she thinks that he really might be. 

“This is me, then,” She tells him. Wishing she’d seen it earlier, not when it’s starting to end. “Best of luck with your book.” 

“Best of luck with your homecoming,” He replies. And he brushes her hair from her face, tucks it just behind her ear. “It was lovely to meet you, Elena.” 

Just like that, he is gone. 

Or maybe she is the one who is gone, because she is running away. Her feet will not take her quickly enough past the spot where she stands. She can hear him ringing the doorbell. Can only hope she’ll be distant when it is answered. She wonders what things he’ll ask Damon; if he will ask about her. She wasn’t lying to him. She used to sit up for hours with Damon and listen to stories of when he first came to the Falls. They were all fake, and she’d known that as well as the rest, but the way Damon told them had almost convinced her they weren’t. He’d liked doing that, she thinks now. She knows she must look a wreck, and momentarily wishes that she had stayed with Elijah. But no - she could not bear to see what he’d say when he learned what she had become. She was a dead thing; less than a dead thing. A monster. That was what everyone said. She was stupid, she thinks, for daring to come to this town. Stupid for daring to try. But still her traitorous feet march her to Alaric’s doorstep. She remembers the first time she lived in this house; the first time she thought of this house as anything but her parent’s. It needs a new coat of paint. The roof used to leak something horrid. To Elena, though, it is home. Home enough that she barely - just barely - knocks. It’s a timid, tremulous knock, but when the door opens, it swings. 

_“Elena?_ ” Jeremy asks her. She’s lost him the worst of them all, she remembers. Then she is hugging her brother on Alaric’s porch. He’d been a sophomore in high school the last time Elena saw him. The last time she saw him, Jeremy’d been dating _Anna._ And she knows that he doesn’t forgive her - if he had done, she thinks, she would never be able to do this - but Jeremy holds her, for now. 

“You’ve grown up,” She tells him, fitfully pulling away. 

“Yeah,” He tells her, “I have.” 

He’s gone hard on her, thinks Elena. Not like she doesn’t deserve it. 

“I didn’t know you were coming.” 

“Founder’s Day,” Says Elena. “Carol Lockwood let loose the hounds of hell. Can I -” 

“Do what you want.” He tells her. 

“Jeremy-” 

“I missed you,” He says. It’s quiet, and hushed, and more than a little bit bitter. “You’re my sister, Elena, and I’m always going to love you, but what you did to me back then was wrong.” 

“I know,” Says Elena, “I know.” 

He’s kept the house much the same. The chair with the one broken leg is the chair with the one broken let. The table, she thinks, is more cluttered. 

“Is Alaric still here?” Asks Elena, and Jeremy stares her down. 

“Not right now,” Says her brother. 

“I could see that,” She says, “I meant more in general. I just - if he doesn’t want me to be here -” 

“Nobody wants you to be here,” He tells her, “That doesn’t mean we’ll kick you out.” 

“Will you talk to me?” Asks Elena. 

“What about?” Jeremy asks. “About how you left us and let us think you were dead? Or about the whole Damon thing? I don’t have anything left to say to you, Elena, alright? It isn’t fine, and it isn’t okay, and I really just wish you would leave. Elena, I want you to leave.” 

“About Mystic Falls,” Says Elena, faltering over the words. “About what happened after I left.” 

“Ask someone else,” Says her brother, “I’m sure that Damon would tell you.” 

With that, her brother goes silent. It lasts like that for a good few minutes. Five, maybe six, before he’s sliding a hot cup of coffee her way. 

“Drink,” Jeremy tells her, “I don’t want to talk about anything with you, but - you are still my sister, and I have missed you, Elena. I do want to know how you’ve been.” 

“Honestly?” Says Elena, sipping the coffee and wincing. It’s _strong._ She didn’t know he drank it strong, and Jeremy huffs at the way that her nose wrinkles up, “I haven’t been doing that welll.” 

“No shit,” Says her brother, “Anna told me as much.” 

“Anna - “

“We’re friends,” He tells her, “Things didn’t really work out. She really wanted to meet you, Elena. She told me once that it felt like she already had. Everyone wants to meet you, Elena. You know why that is? They hear stories about my sister. My smart, kind, beautiful sister who chose to betray all of us.” 

“I didn’t want this,” She tells him. She’s looking into her coffee, because Jeremy just looks too old. “I never wanted to hurt you.” 

“Yeah,” He says, “But you did. Do you know what it’s like to get hurt?” 

“What kind of a question is that?” Asks Elena, “Of course I know what it’s like. I lost everyone too.” 

“Not your sister,” He tells her. 

Elena finds, later, that Jeremy’s kept her old bedroom, but she can’t stand sleeping alone. Maybe that’s why she does it. Fingers the watch ‘round her neck and opens the latch on her window. In honesty, she doesn’t know. He’s stoked something inside of her. Something that wants to murdered; neck-wrung and hung out to dry. That’s the only possible reason for it, and she knows that it won’t be enough. But she’s in before she can leave, and Elijah’s car isn’t there. The walking is tiring to her. She just wants to let herself breathe. Instead she’ll let Damon Salvatore rip her apart. It’s an apt fear, seeing the look in his eyes. He looks like he’s spent hours sharpening the knife. 

“Elena _Gilbert,_ ” He tells her, “Who would’ve thought you’d be here?” 

“You already knew,” Says Elena. She sounds as worn as a thread. “I know that you already knew.” 

“I found it all out from _Elijah,_ ” He says. “An author, Elena? You can do better than that.” 

“I didn’t come here for this.” 

“What did you come here for, then?” 

“I want you to kiss me,” She says. And Damon is howling with laughter. 

“Stop. Being. _Katherine._ ” He tells her, backing her close to the wall. “You are not and will _never_ be Katherine. By the way,” He says, flashing away and letting Elena collapse. “I love what you’ve done with your hair.” 

“Damon,” She tells him, “I didn’t _come here_ for this.” 

“Cut the crap, ‘Lena,” He says. “Why the fuck are you in Mystic Falls?” 

“Founder’s Day things,” Says Elena. “Since I’m a Gilbert and all.” 

“Founder’s Day things,” Repeats Damon, “Since you’re a _Gilbert_ and all.” 

“I really do want you to kiss me,” She says. Lies, she thinks, but whatever. No one can break her like Damon, and maybe she likes being broken. Maybe it’s what she deserves. “I have nightmares all of the time. I almost fucked somebody today.” 

“I’m not going to kiss you,” He tells her. “Lock you away in the basement? I might. But kiss you? No, Elena. You had that chance, and you decided to leave.” 

“What is it with you?” Asks Elena, “All of you and the ‘leaving’? I went to live with my _mother._ It’s not like I wanted to flee.” 

“Funny how life works out,” Damon says. “Losing two mothers - that’s just plain old bad luck.” 

“I’ll slap you,” She tells him. This, as well, is a lie. She’s far too tired to slap him. She feels like her bones are all jelly, and Damon looks like she’s prey. “I came here to sleep for the night. It was here or Alaric’s, and I can’t - I can’t talk to Alaric right now.” 

“So you thought you would come talk to me?” 

“You hate me,” She tells him, “I get it. But Damon? Could you put the whole past thing behind us, just for tonight? You don’t know the hell I’ve been through. Jeremy won’t even talk to me, anymore.” 

“Reasonable,” Damon says, “I don’t know why I’m doing it.” 

“Just - Just let me stay?” Asks Elena. 

“I wish that I could,” Damon says. “But the thing is, Elena, you’re worse than I used to be. Did anyone tell you that, ever? You’ve gone to the dark side, Elena. Does it feel as good as you’d hoped?” 

He is boxing her in, yet again. This time she can’t get away. But she knows that Damon can’t hurt her - not as badly as she did. _I never loved you,_ she’d told him. _Why did you think that I did?_ He’s always, she thinks, been a panther. Some shadow that hunts in the dark. And that is what she is. The dark. She is the woman who ripped him to pieces and never looked back at it once. Whatever he sees fit to punish her with, Elena knows she deserves it. It doesn’t mean that she’s ready for this. 

Then again, nobody is. 

The second part’s easy; the waking in somebody’s bed. She thinks that she might have left bloodstains. The scratches, those might even scar. But it was her fault, she knows, for daring to come here at all. It’s some small part of her penance. At least she could feel it, she thinks, as she slips out of Damon’s bedroom. She is wearing a shirt that doesn’t come down to her knees. It’s one of his shirts, so white that the bite marks show through. She still remembers where everything is in this house. Still knows where he keeps the coffee. Damon’s not here, anymore. He’s not waiting for her in the living room, twirling his fingers ‘round whiskey, and he doesn’t have creamer on hand. _I never loved you,_ she’d told him. _I never loved anyone._ She’d loved, once, so many people: She’d loved her parents, her brother, her aunt. Alaric and Stefan and Damon, all in their own separate ways. She had loved having Bonnie and Caroline. Loved, for a brief few months, Matt. So many lives lost, she thinks. How do you ever come back? There isn’t a secret to it. If there were, she thinks, someone’d have told her. But she can make up her own. The secret can be as easy as downing hot coffee and liking the way that it burns. Wincing around fresh, verdant bruises, the sound of Isobel’s name. And the secret, she thinks, could be this: 

Elijah Smith, aspiring author, ringing the Boarding House doorbell. She opens it for him - there is nothing left in her to hide. She doesn’t care what Elijah will think. But she knows what Elijah will think. Elijah will think that she’s easy. He’ll think that she hates herself just as much as she should. Somehow, she thinks, she has never been able to muster that hatred; and that, perhaps, is the worst of all her betrayal. That she cannot just _hate_ herself for them, the people who died in her place. 

“Elena?” He asks her. His eyes roam her form, and his jawline tightens and ticks. “Elena, are you alright?” 

“I came back,” She says, “And there’s coffee. Don’t ask where he is, I don’t know.” She wonders if she sounds broken to him, or if it is something else. But what it is, she thinks, doesn’t matter, because she’s firmly inside of his arms, and his hands are buried into her hair, burrowing down to the root. 

“Who _did_ this to you, Elena?” 

“I did it,” She tells him, “I brought it all down on myself.” 

Elijah is pulling away. _Good,_ Elena thinks, _Leave me, Elijah, just go._

“I refuse to believe that,” He tells her. 

“Believe what you want,” Says Elena. “I told you, Elijah. If you don’t want to listen, you don’t have to listen, but don’t you dare ask me to lie.” 

“I’m asking hwo hurt you,” He tells her. “It’s hardly the same thing, Elena.” 

He is frowning at her so sweetly, so softly, that Elena thinks she might die. 

“You really don’t get it,” She tells him. “That’s how it is here, Elijah.” 

He looks as if he won’t accept it. As if there’s another alternative that Elena knows doesn’t exist. She wishes that she could ease all the pain on his face. But then, with a jolt, realizes he feels the same. Elijah _cares_ about her. Some girl that he hardly knows. And she is a sight, a worse sight than yesterday evening. She is a bruised, battered canvas, splattered in black-blue and red. It hurts to do anything, much, though she knows she asked well enough. Damon’s tossed all of her clothing, so she’s nothing to wear for the Founder’s Day Party, not like she’d wanted to go. Only his stupid white button-down shirt that will signal to everyone else that Elena Gilbert, the traitor, has fallen back into her ways. Everybody will be there, except for the ones who have died. Their places will be covered in silence, the honor due to their ghosts. Elijah could write his book about that. Founder’s Day, in Mystic Falls, when an outcast unclean returned. 

“I don’t have any clothes,” Says Elena. She’s ducked her way out of his arms in the way that she learned as a girl. “It’s hopeless out here, don’t you see?” 

“I”ll give you clothes,” Says Elijah. His eyes are still burning with worry. “And I’ll - “ 

“No,” She tells him, “You won’t. I won’t ask that of you, Elijah.” 

“You’re not asking,” He tells her, “I want to help you, Elena.” 

“People don’t help me,” She says. 

“Do I look like most people to you?” 

Thinking about it, Elena’s entirely sure. Other people would run for the hills; tell her she’s not welcome here. But even despite all the things that she’s told him, Elijah’d been glad she was home. For her own sake, for being back here, in the small little town she was raised. _You never forget it, your home._ Caroline told her that, once. _I don’t think that I’ll ever leave_. It must have been in tenth grade, when they were too young to think about them for a moment, the futures lying ahead. Miss Mystic Falls had been coming up that year, and Jenna’d helped pay for her dress. With her carrot-top hair and her having been forced out of college, with her smiles and exasperation. She’d never wanted them, children. Never wanted any of that. She’d liked smoking pot and staying up drinking late. Having sex with men from the clubs. _I’m not a mother!_ She’d screamed when she came through the doors. _What do you mean that they’ve died?_ Elena hadn’t been crying, but she’d lost part of her when she heard it, and as she’d held Jeremy there she had known that it wasn’t fine. It would never be _fine_ again. 

How was it, she’d wondered, that one wrong turn of a radio dial had robbed their lives of so much? She’d looked at the woman who sometimes came over for Christmas and thought: _My God, he won’t ever smile again. Not for the rest of his life._ It makes sense, thinks Elena, that Anna has broken his heart. They were born to have their hearts broken, she thinks, and if she can take every heartbreak her brother might feel and pour it into herself, then how could he say that she’s selfish? _I did everything for you,_ she thinks. _I let everyone hurt me for you_. And everyone, she thinks, will. 

Even the man who is here. 

“I don’t understand,” Says Elena, for lack of anything else. She’s melting into the floor. “I don’t - I only met you a day ago. Elijah, I don’t understand.” 

“Who hurt you?” He asks her. He is giving her one, final chance. And she knows that if she shies from him this time, he’ll walk away and seh might never see him again. All of his grace and all of his caring will just have been lost on her. _Running_ , Isobel’d said once, _Is the courage to set yourself free._ But freedom, she thinks, can sometimes be overrated. 

“Damon,” She says, in hardly more than a whisper. She is falling forwards. Prays that the ground before her will open itself up and swallow her down like sweet wine. It is seven a.m on a Wednesday morning and she might have something to live for. She isn’t prepared for it, any. “I can’t do this,” She tells him, “It isn’t that I don’t want to, but I owe him better than this-” 

“You don’t owe anyone anything.” 

The curtness of him stops her short. He’s slid her into hsi grasp anew, and she’s hovering there, caught in the spell of his eyes. It’s a different hardness than Jeremy’s is. Something bred out of wanting for somebody else. _It isn’t me,_ thinks Elena. _It couldn’t possibly be._ She is clad in Damon’s thin shirt, and the fabric of it is caught in conditioning breeze. Her legs are bare and her arms are shivering goosebumps. Elena doesn’t think about herself, but that’s where he is right now. He’s staring into her soul, and she thinks that he likes what he sees. _How_ could he like what he sees? But there’s something in it, this soul-staring-in of Elijah. He’s left his doors open for her, and Elena searches him wildly. He isn’t turning away. There’s a pain inside him, buried deep in his heart, that she aches and yearns to undo. If he holds her like this for much longer, Elena knows she’ll unravel. _You can say anything to me,_ Elijah’s gaze seems to tell her. _I won’t be letting you go._

“Have you eaten yet?” Asks Elijah, and she hastily shakes her head. 

“Clothes,” Says Elijah, “Then breakfast - If that isn’t too forwards?” 

“No,” Elena says, holding back a rising, pulsating tide, “No, that isn’t - That isn’t too forwards of you, but don’t you have writing to do?” 

“The book can wait,” Says Elijah. “You need me more, sweet Elena.” 

The words roll from his mouth like honey, transformed into lingering glance. She’s going slack in his arms, and the tension is leaving her body. He allows her to step out of him without asking. But that is the thing about him - she gets the sense, looking at him, that she’ll never have need to ask. She’s never met somebody like him. She doesn’t even read books. _But I’ll read yours,_ she thinks. Makes that promise to him. 

“Where’s good to eat around here?” Asks Elijah, and Elena is saying,

“The Grill.” 

He raises an eyebrow at her. 

“It’s the local dive,” Says Elena. “I went there - God, so much, as a kid. Everyone does, here in town. They even do fundraisers there.” 

She bites back the old memories. Shooting pool with Bonnie and Matt, dust tumbled in with the sunlight. Sitting on barstools when she was fifteen and letting herself feel the drink. They had tossed their heads back and laughed with each other. Sloppily kissed as the yellow lights fizzled and cracked. Things had been safe with him, Matt. She had only ever had that safety once. She thinks that Damon will want back his shirt; he’ll keep every dark splotch her blood’s left on it. Sniff at them in the dark. She bets that he dreams about her, most nights, but she wouldn’t ask on her life. 

“Clothes,” Says Elena,” Then breakfast. I think that I can do that.”


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author’s Note: The second chapter! Fair warning before we get into it that this story, as was hinted at in the first chapter, does delve into some pretty dark themes now and again - but it does not, in any capacity, mean that all hope is lost.**
> 
> **As always, I don’t own TVD. It only keeps me awake.**

_I want to know where I’ll wake up tomorrow,_ Elena thinks, standing in front of his mirror. She isn’t wearing a suit. Elijah’s would be far too big on her, but she’s slipped his tie in her pocket. A thief, and also a liar, but she couldn’t have stopped herself. It’s a piece of him that she’ll take back with her, once he’s left her like she knows he will. The clothes, he’d said, were his sisters. She doesn’t think that they were - they fit her too well for that - but she’d had no right to question him. Not when he had been holding her hand kind and pure. She surveys herself in the cool sheet of glass, turning this way and that. There is the bruise, in the same place that it’s always been, making a plum-colored desert out of her rounded left cheekbone. There are new bruises, too, ones that Damon has left. She feels like a painting, almost. A vision of eggplant and gash. 

The clothes really do fit her well. They curve with her breasts and even her quivering stomach. The long sleeves hide what a foundation swatch never could. She’s been in the bathroom a long time, fighting the urge to get lost. Staring down at the tiles, their intricate patterns reminding Elena of all the ways she can’t belong. _I want to know you,_ she finds herself thinking, and clears the thought from her head. 

“Breakfast,” She tells Elijah, shaking him out of his book. He would be a reader, she thinks. She wonders what he likes reading, if she has heard of the title, or if his tastes are as foreign to her as the kindness he seems bent to show. It matters not either way. 

“You look beautiful,” Says Elijah, but his eyes keep flitting upwards, straying to the vestiges of Damon Salvatore’s fingers, hard on her forehead and throat. 

“I do,” She says, “And I’m starving. You mentioned breakfast, before?” 

Elijah’s face lights in a smile that she hasn’t seen. A true, honest smile unhindered. Elena feels herself weaken. 

“I did,” Says Elijah, “If you’d so kindly oblige me. I know that you talked about going to the Mystic Grill, but I wondered if you might let me?” 

“You cook?” Asks Elena. Her jaw opens hard to the floor. 

“I have six siblings,” He tells her. “And both of my parents worked. It was an important skill to develop. I’m not planning on poisoning you.” 

“That’s good,” Says Elena. She can’t stop _looking_ at him. She feels like she’s sixteen years old. “I had wondered who’d hired you.” 

He laughs a rumbling laugh. 

“I work alone,” Says Elijah. 

_Not anymore, though,_ she thinks. He’s put a new suit on. A scarf to ward out the last of the cold. She’d forgotten the way that it’s cold here, at night and in morning, and rubs her own arms absentmindedly through the shirt. 

“Thank you,” She says, “For the clothes.” 

“They fit you?” He asks. 

“Like a charm. Are you a mind reader, or something?” 

Elijah shrugs. 

“Just someone with connections.” 

“I bet,” Says Elena, and, at his quizzical look, “It just looks like you’re someone like that. You’re wearing a suit to do cooking.” 

“If you think that you can do better than me -” 

“Please,” She tells him, “I burn water when I try to boil it. I think that I’ll leave it to you.” 

“Then by all means,” He says, “Sit.” 

She has no sooner done it than orange juice is in front of her hands, and something that looks like hard drugs. 

“Elijah?” She asks him. 

“Iron,” He tells her. “Far be it from me to comment on somebody’s health, but I’ve found that it helps with my nerves.” Elena closes her eyes, then. Loses herself, if just for a moment, to the sound and the smell of his kitchen. _You miss so much when you’re looking at me, Elena,_ Damon’d once told her. _Do you even know what it sounds like when my heart is beating?_ She had shaken her head while his finger had yanked her chin up. The only heartbeat she knew was the one that had bled its way out of her mother, trapped in the hold of the lake. Her mother’s blood had been water, that day. Her father’s neck had been snapped. The kitchen smells like the heat of the stove turning on, and the clean, rushing steel of the knife. The sweetness of freshly cloved garlic. But it also smells like Elijah, a scent she is learning to learn. Like parchment and dry-cleaning soap, mixed with a hint of pine needles in spring. His tread is so still that she wonders if he’s even moving. She could sit like this, she thinks, for days and for hours on end, until everything starts coming through. 

Sleeping over at Caroline’s house, her flashlight under the covers. Talking about kissing Matt. _What was it like?_ She had asked her. Her blue eyes had glittered with wonder. She’d never kissed someone, before. _I don’t know,_ Elena had said. _It was nice, Care. It was with Matt._ Bonnie had scoffed from the other side of the bed, already half-asleep. _It should be more than nice,_ she had told her, as Caroline’d sighed to her hands: _I hope that I fall in love someday._

 _You’re beautiful,_ she had thought. Even without light, she had been. Blonde and pale and shining like silvery moonlight. Nothing like she was now. _We’ll have time for that Care,_ she had told her, putting her hand on her hand. _I guess that we will,_ she had said, _But I want it to be someday soon, you know? I want to know how it feels, being loved._

_Nobody knows how it feels,_ is what Elena’d say now. _You can’t possibly know how it feels, Caroline. Not ’til you’ve had it and lost it._

“Penny for your thoughts?” Asks Elijah. Her eyes snap open like sunflowers after a storm. 

“Remembering,” Says Elena. “It smells - Wonderful. Really good.” 

“I do my best,” Says Elijah. “I haven’t cooked for someone in ages. I apologize if it isn’t up to your standards.” 

“Standards?” She asks him. He frowns with a small, furrowed crease. “I’ve never smelled anything better than this in my life. But trust me, that bar is low.” 

Elijah doesn’t respond. She can feel the fear pulsing in her, teasing the links of the fence. But there is a plate in his hand, and he’s holding a fork out to her, just like he did yesterday. Is it wrong, she wonders, to be here with him, when she’s only known him a day? Is anything wrong, if it’s something that you need to do? _Predestiny,_ he had told her. You can do whatever you’d like. In that case, she thinks, she will eat. She is already going to hell. What harm can there be in feeling okay, some, beforehand? 

“Oh my _God,_ ” She says, shoveling three bites at once. 

“You’re hungry, I take it?” He asks her. 

“Famished,” Elena admits. “I kind of forgot about dinner.” 

“You should take better care of yourself,” Says Elijah, as Elena slows down her pace. It’s better cooking than Jenna’s had been, and she lets herself take her good time. 

“That’s not how it works,” Says Elena, feeling the sting of his words.

“Why?” Asks Elijah. 

She tells him, 

“I’m paying my debt.” 

“Who do you owe?” Asks Elijah. 

“Not that kind of debt,” Says Elena. The breakfast, now, tastes of sawdust, and she knows she can’t eat anymore. She pushes the plate far away. Barely half of it’s gone. She sips at her orange juice. It burns at her throat like sharp acid. She gets less than a minute of peace. 

“You’re all skin and bones,” Says Elijah. There’s a pitiful note in his voice, and Elena can’t look in his eyes. “Elena -” 

“It’s fine,” Says Elena, “Thank you for breakfast, Elijah. I should go home now, I think.” 

_Home,_ thinks Elena. _How can you go somewhere when you’re already there?_ But there are things to get done. Conversations to flee from. Jeremy to help with preparations. Founder’s Day’s less than two days away, and she’s barely started at all. She needs to go turn in the pocket watch. See the original document. Damon’s great-great-grandfather signed it. The two of them bore the same name. He had shown it to her when she was just seventeen. _The Salvatore brothers,_ he’d told her, _Lost more than you in that church._ She had smelled the flames when he said it. The reek of slick kerosene. Elijah is raising his arm up. The invitation, it says, is open. _You can stay here with me,_ it tells her. _All that you need do is stay._ But Elena is already standing. She can’t be here for one minute longer. Not when he’s talking so quiet. Not when he’s being so _nice._

“I’ll see you on Friday?” She asks him, knowing that they will not speak. Elijah’s arm drops to his side, and a mask comes up when he blinks. 

“Are you going back to the Salvatore’s house?” He asks her. 

“I’m going to talk to my brother.” 

Shock comes into his eyes, and he opens up his mouth to speak, but Elena just does it for him. 

“There’s more ways to lose someone than dying,” She says. _And this is me showing you one._ When she feels the wind hit her soul writhes to turn back around. It’s just like Isobel said, though. Sometimes running is running away, but sometimes it’s saving yourself. And that is what makes her sneak one last Orpheus look. She doesn’t deserve to be saved. This is her punishment, then. Elijah, staring so brokenly at her that she wonders at how impossible it seems, her not having met him before. They lock eyes for a moment, there in the slim wooden doorway. _I don’t want you to miss me,_ Elena tries to convey. 

She thinks that he might understand. 

“I left him,” She says, when she climbs back in through her window. Jeremy’s on her bed. Sitting there just like he did the first time that he read her diary. “I swear I won’t leave you again. Can you - please try to trust me?” She asks. 

“Sure,” He says, “I can try.” 

It’s the best that she’s going to get, so she follows him down to the sitting room, takes her way there across from him. When they were seven years old, two robins made a slow nest on the birch tree in their backyard. But the winter that year had been lean, and the mother and father had starved. Jeremy’d clambered the branches, hoping to save that last, fleeting slip of a bird, and the sound his arm made when it cracked haunts all her dreams like a ghost. She’d stitched it herself with spare thread while their mother drove home from work, and made him drink plenty of water. He’d been a child, Elena remembers. He had just been a _child._ She is the one who feels like a child now, seeing him sitting so straight, and she hears a voice tell her, _It’s okay, sometimes, to need help._

“I brought your old pocket watch back,” Elena tells him instead, pushing the pain from her forefront. Her brother, right now, needs his sister. Not a blubbering mess. “Carol Lockwood wants it for the Historical Society. I figured that I should ask first.” 

She shakes her hair off of her neck and looses the chain where it hangs. Holds it out to him, warmed from her chest and the heart that she still, somehow, has. Jeremy’s fingers close on the shape in her palm. He lets himself take it slowly, and she feels every time that he slept with his head on her shoulder, drowsy and dim in the car on the way back from school. _I love you,_ she thinks, _You’re my family. It was all just getting too much._ That’s what she’d written down. And he had spent months with that note crumpled up in his pocket. Searching, she thinks, for a body that they’d never found. 

“You can donate it,” Jeremy tells her. Raw, and breaking a bit. “Dad told me once it was cursed.” 

“Everything’s cursed here,” She tells him. That’s what their father’d have said. He’d believed in them, vampires. Werewolves and everything, too. He’d said Uncle John had convinced him, which wasn’t surprising at all. Elena remembers him talking about it. Her father, the therapist, casually discussing the existence of fanged, bloodthirsty killers, sharing tea with Elizabeth Forbes. She had taken turns with Caroline listening in through the crack in the door. _They’re getting worse,_ he had told her, _They’ll need to learn sometime, Liz._

 _I won’t let you do it,_ she’d told him, _They’re not old enough, Grayson. You know that._. 

They’d been fourteen years old that year, freshmen in high school. They’d felt on top of the world. When Elena went to her first decade dance in that polka dot skirt that Vicki had given her cheap, spun to the soundtracks of movies that didn’t have words, she had known what it meant to be human. It meant that the light and the darkness could both illuminate sometimes, as long as you kept up the tempo. Caroline’d dressed as a flapper, and they had promised each other. _Kiss a stranger for me,_ Caroline’d told her. Elena had kissed Matt instead. He’d been hanging out by the punch bowl, fighting with Tyler again, and she’d flounced her way over, wobbling in her mother’s heels. _I didn’t know you were coming,_ he’d told her. _I didn’t know that you fought._ Their mouths had met somewhere, she thinks, thought she couldn’t have told him where now. 

“Where have you been?” Asks her brother. 

“Helping a writer,” She tells him. 

“A writer?” Jeremy asks her, “I didn’t know that you knew reporters. Who’s the story about?” 

“Town,” Says Elena, “And it isn’t an article, Jer. He’s writing a book about small town folklore. He wanted to know about vampires.” 

Something flickers over his face then, but before she can ask what it is, he is telling her, 

“Show him the journals sometime. Half of them are upstairs.” 

“You’d let a stranger into your house?” Asks Elena. 

“He isn’t a vampire, is he?” 

Elena feels something tight and warm in her chest. Jeremy’s _smiling_ at her, and Elena thinks, _I was wrong. I was wrong about you being sad. You’ll fall in love someday too._

“I’ll tell him,” She says, “But be warned; he’ll grill you incessantly if you’ve read them.” 

“You know that I have,” Says her brother. “I wondered why you never did.” 

“Wasn’t really my scene,” Says Elena. “Seemed like a guy thing to me.” 

“Anna read them,” Jeremy tells her, glancing quick at his hands. 

“She sounds like a good friend,” She tells him. Swallowing around a lump. “I’m glad that you had someone, Jer. Someone who wasn’t Alaric. I know that he drove you crazy.” 

“Still does,” Jeremy says. “Which, speaking of -” 

“I’ll be gone before then,” Says Elena, “Not - Just out of the house.” 

“You don’t have to,” He tells her. “He’s mad at you, but I know that he’d still like to see you. He never forgot you, Elena. You were a daughter to him.” 

“I know that I was,” Says Elena. He’d told her as much himself. _I know that we’ve lost some time,_ he had said, _But your parents want me to help you. Do you think you could let me do that?_ Alaric’d liked vampires too. He’d been so convinced they were real that he’d kept wooden stakes in his car. She’d hated riding with him. She’d thought that they might impale her if they careened off of the highway. She remembers the scent of the burning. She remembers the feeling of glass. And reaching out for her mother’s hand. The water had taken her ring off, carried it with the current. Her mother’s hand had been cooler than it was. Stiffer than it was, somehow. When they pulled out the bodies, Elena had just turned away. 

“You still are,” Jeremy tells her. “Stay for awhile. You’ll see.” 

But Elena thinks that she can’t. _I promised you and I’m going to break it someday. Someday soon, I’ll be even less than I was._ What could she say to Alaric? I’m sorry your wife died? I’m sorry that I saw it happen? What could he say back to her that isn’t the palm of his hand? She had stood in the doorjamb so many times after class, talking with him while he huddled over his maps. She’d hated the way Jenna asked her to help her meet men. _It’s good to meet you, Elena,_ he’d told her, the very first day that they spoke. _I wanted to talk about Jeremy with you. I understand things have been hard._

_You have no idea,_ , she had told him, and he’d told her, 

_My wife, Isobel, died. Whatever you’re feeling right now, I want to know it’s okay._ It isn’t okay, thinks Elena. None of it is okay. It isn’t okay that he isn’t her father, and it isn’t okay that he wants to be. She’s lost two mothers already. She can’t lose a father again. _You have to have something to lose it,_ she thinks as she looks at her brother. He isn’t a boy anymore. She sees it in him when he stands, shaking the tenseness away, and says, 

“I already called Bonnie.” 

Elena’s eyes widen out. 

“Things didn’t work out with Anna,” He says, a shy little smirk on his face, “But that doesn’t mean I’m alone.” 

“That’s - “ 

“You don’t have to say it,” He tells her. “Save it for Bonnie. You’ll need all the strength you can get.” Elena knows he’s not lying - Bonnie is moral. That’s just the way that she is. Every day she has loved her for that, even when spiting her ire. This will be the first and the last time they talk, but Bonnie is letting her have it, and Elena knows, as far inside of herself as she’s ever found time to explore, that she’ll never be able to thank her for it enough. She thinks abou how Bonnie looked, way back then. Wonders if she looks the same. 

She slaps the same, she will learn. 

And the fire of it is a welcome respite. A waking up call for a girl who is growing complacent. Bonnie Bennett is eight hundred dark lines of fury and shame and regret. 

“I helped them look for your corpse,” Bonnie tells her, leaving no room for ‘hello’. “I never thought you were dead, Elena, but nobody listened to me.” 

“Jeremy listens to you,” Says Elena, knowing not where it comes from. “I mean - it sounds like he listens to you.” Bonnie stands there, unwavering in her anger, but she loses the fierceness of it. Now it’s just anger again. The resolute anger that says what needs to be said without wasting time on the words. Elena finds that she’s missed it, the way that Bonnie can judge. She wants to wrap herself in it, just like a blanket, and let it lull her to sleep. But Bonnie won’t let her get close. _You don’t deserve it,_ the tautness of her tells Elena. Elena knows that she’s right. 

“How long are you staying?” She asks her. 

“Awhile,” She tells her. It’s strange, she thinks, on her tongue. It tastes like something that she hasn’t tasted in years. “Jeremy wants me to -” 

“Fuck you, Elena,” She says. “You don’t just get to come back. We picked all the pieces up for you, and you think that we’ll let you stay here and do it again?” 

“I’m staying for Jer,” Says Elena, “Not for anyone else. Jeremy needs his family.” 

“Jeremy’s chosen his family,” She snarls, “Since Jeremy’s own didn’t stay.” 

“It wasn’t their fault,” Says Elena. The words, they stick coming up. “Bonnie, none of them _meant_ to die.” 

“None of them except you.” 

“I wrote him a letter,” She says. The sobs are choking her up. Clogging the pipe of her lifeline. “I didn’t jump off a cliff, Bonnie, I went out of town for a while. You don’t know what it felt like.”

“I know what it felt like for him,” Bonnie says. “He cried over you. He cried over his dead sister, and then he asked Alaric why everyone he loved died. What the hell was too much for you, being a sister?” 

_Damon,_ Elena thinks. _Damon was too much for me. The way that everyone looked when I walked in a room was too much._ But they’re looking worse at her now, and the seeping cold in her bones is returning, those bones that are starting to poke through. Elena is starving. Her stomach is roiling, churning, just like the foam in the lake. _I don’t know who I am anymore,_ thinks Elena. She can’t say it to anybody. But she thinks that she might’ve while she was under his sheets, his long body forcing her down. When he bit on the shell of her ear and drew blood and she thought it was funny, because, as a child, she’d never liked wearing earrings. _I don’t know who I am anymore,_ she’d have said, and Damon, he would’ve just laughed. 

“It doesn’t matter,” She tells her, facing the lion down straight. “Why I left, it’s none of your business. I told you that I was alive. I told you that I needed space. It’s not my fault that you didn’t believe me.” 

“I can’t listen to you,” Bonnie says, “I don’t know what you told him, Elena, but speaking as someone who knows Mystic Falls, you’ll be leaving when all this is over.” _All this,_ she thinks, _What is all this?_ Is it Founder’s Day, with its echo of clementine pulp, and the sneaking away into rooms to punch-drunk play spin the bottle? Caroline’d kissed Tyler Lockwood, and she had had wandering hands. Nobody else turned their back. And she’d been seven mintues inside of a closet with Bonnie - it was hot, somebody had argued. _I can make feathers float,_ she had told her. _No really, Elena, I can._ She thinks that she must have imagined that night, in all of its goldenrod glory. It makes no sense to her now. 

“I’ll stay here if Jeremy needs me,” She says. And the way Bonnie looks at her’s pleading: _Why can’t you do anything right?_ She’s thinking about Elijah, like she has been since yesterday night. What would Elijah have done? She doesn’t think she could say. But somehow she wants to find out. Run back and ask him what words she should say, even though she might trip and fall. _I’ll remember you,_ thinks Elena. _In seven more years, you’ll be the man who caught me. You’ve ruined it for me,_ she’ll think, as she pours her way over the prose that she already knows will be perfect. It’ll sound, she thinks, just like he’s talking to her. She’ll be older, Elena, and lonelier than she is now. She’ll be living somewhere derelict, with a burner phone and unshakable, permanant hunger. And all that she’ll ever have is a weekend in Mystic Falls when she got some new cuts on her back. The world will keep turning around them. Children, still, will be born. And Elena will look through the windows of dark office buildings and think about being a child; and all that she’s lost, and all that she has yet to lose, because life likes to do that to her. 

“How’s Caroline?” Asks Elena. 

“She’s married.” Says Bonnie. 

“Tyler?” Elena asks. 

“Matt.” 

“ _Matt?_ I didn’t know she liked Matt.” 

“You didn’t know most things, Elena,” Bonnie says, clasping her hands at her front. Rocking back on her heels. “Jeremy said I should talk to you. ‘Talk to Elena’, he told me. ‘I really think that she’s changed.” 

“I have,” Says Elena, “I’m trying.” 

“Next time,” Says Bonnie, “Try harder.” 

It is like this, she thinks, as the door, underneath her, slams shut. What is the weight of a promise, when it’s heavy and sinks like a stone? Alaric once told her how Egyptians thought heaven was reached, by the weighing of one human heart against a single frail feather. Elena’s would break the scale. How can she leave here, she wonders, but how - oh how - can she stay? _I want to know you,_ she thinks to herself. Holds onto it like a token. Elijah’s lost something too. She had seen it inside of his eyes. And if she had stayed for one minute more, he might even have told her about it. Yet Elena thinks that she’d been too heavy, inside of his arms. She lets the hours slip by. The clock is ticking, counting the armistice down. The doorbell rings, more times than once, and Jeremy sends them away. She sifts through the papers, lugs down the last of the journals. Elijah is right about them - they are a fascinating read, if one can get over the original Salvatore brothers. It’s not like there’s much of a difference, she thinks, between a vampire and Damon. But vampires do have humanity. Damon had never has that, for all that he had pretended. It is when the bell rings that last, fretful time that Elena snaps shut the journal, because she _remembers_ that knock. 

“Hey,” She tells him, “I’m home.” 

“Jeremy said,” Says Alaric. His eyes are filling with water. _Don’t cry,_ she thinks, _Please don’t cry. It’s me, Alaric, Elena. Don’t waste your tears over me._

“Are we going to talk?” Asks Elena.

“Tomorrow,” He tells her. “Tonight - Just try and sleep.” 

_Next time,_ she hears, _Try harder._ Dreaming has never been easy. She never knows what to do with the sweep of the lake. It makes a fool of them all. Sometimes she feels like it’s filling her up, climbing inside her and making the whole of her into that cool, rushing liquid. Then she feels herself, like her mother, go cold, and longs for the warmth of the sun. It is not the sun’s warmth that comes out of nowhere, tonight. It is arms stained with blood and with ink, pulling her onto the shore of a beautiful, beautiful place. 

“Where am I?” She asks Elijah. 

“Somewhere I used to call home.” 

“Why -” 

“I told you,” He says, as if lecturing a small child. “You looked like you needed someone.” 

“I have myself,” Says Elena, but Elijah gives a slight shake. 

“There’s not enough of you left, sweet Elena,” He tells her. “We’ll be working on that.” 

Elena huffs. The breath makes a shape in the sky. 

“How old are you?” Asks Elena. “I’m dreaming of you, and I still don’t know your real name.” 

“I was thirty,” He says, in an odd, stilted manner, “As for my name - I’d like to think we can choose new names for ourselves. It helps, when the going gets tough.” 

“Petrova, then,” Says Elena. She thinks that she might see him flinch. “That name,” She tells him, “Has power, Elijah, over somebody that hurt me.” 

_Katerina Petrova,_ the picture had read. They had looked so alike that they could have been sisters. They’d had the same olive skin. And she was the one Damon’d loved. The woman that Damon had _loved._ How could she ever compete? _I never loved you,_ she’d told him, and Katherine hadn’t either, and wasn’t that when it started, the day that she learned about Katerina Petrova, the woman that hadn’t loved Damon? What would her life have been like, she wonders, if Katherine didn’t exist? 

“It can be whatever you’d like,” Says Elijah, drawing her into the dreaming again, and the sound of the cool, rushing water. The glinting of soft bedroom lamplight. “You’re young, Elena. You’ve time.” 

“But I am who I am,” Says Elena. Dreams about other things, now. Cheerleading season, and summer heat, and the old Lockwood mansion where they’d gone to party and smoke. Elena had never liked smoking back then. The scathing of it made her choke. But everyone else’d smoked, and Tyler had got them from somewhere. Red _Solo_ cups and a half-empty bottle of gin. Lemons that hadn’t been frozen, their juice stinging hard in the eyes. They’d been bent over a fire. The summer air’d smelled like cherry smoke, and it had gotten into her nose. Settled in it like a prayer. She’d been tipsy and tawdry and smiling like a fool. Her parents had still been alive. And Jeremy hadn’t been there; he hadn’t seen it when Damon came in. _You’re Elena?_ He’d asked her, _My brother asked me to come._ She’d hardly seen Stefan in him; they were too different, too disparate, she had thought. Damon’d stalked in and the blazing fire’d gone cold. He’d pulled her away from her friends. Out to the edge of the woods, where he’d sat them down on a log and stared his way in her so long and so hard that she’d felt all her limbs turn to ice. And then he had smirked, that cocky smirk that he had, and Elena had warmed up to him. She hadn’t felt loved, and she hadn’t felt safe, but she’d felt like he’d let her live. Like he’d let her run, if she wanted. _I’m Damon,_ he’d told her. _Don’t worry, I won’t keep you long._

_Don’t worry,_ she thinks, as the weight of all of those years comes crashing down on her shoulders. How long is a year when you have been loathed for seven? And how long is an hour when it ends in you keeping a promise? _I’m kissing a stranger for you,_ she had thought, as her lips had crashed into Damon’s. It hadn’t been safe, and it hadn’t been gentle, and she’d known in that moment that he wouldn’t have let her run. 

“I’m older than you could imagine,” He tells her. 

“Centuries?” Asks Elena. 

“Millenium,” Says Elijah. 

“What is that like?” She asks him. “How do you keep going on?” 

“By going,” He tells her, “Wherever I feel like I should.” 

“Did you feel like writing the book?” Asks Elena. She finds herself wanting to read it. Needing to see what he’ll say about it, this town that has cost her so much. _A hundred years ago, people were burned here,_ she pictures him writing down. _And it still happens today._

“I felt like I needed to do it.” 

“Is that the same thing?” She asks him. 

“If you want it to be, it can.” 

“You’re talking in circles,” She says. “It’s my dream, Elijah. Be helpful.” 

He chuckles that timber-y chuckle. 

“You think that you’re dreaming?” He asks her, and Elena blinks her way slow. “I suppose that you’re right in a way. But I’ve always thought dreams were real. They feel like that, don’t they? I used to dream of the old country. The old country’s always been real.” 

“I used to dream of my mother,” She says. Says it because it is true. In those first few months when the whole of the world had gone dark, she had dreamed of a woman who carried the sun in her eyes. They’d been the same color as hers. When they were young, they would go to the zoo in Atlanta. Her grandparents had lived there. They’d walked up to the wall that the otters swam through and she’d put her hands up to the glass. _Leave fingerprints,_ her mother had told her. _They like to know they’ve been seen._ She had spoken right then as both a woman and girl. A girl whose fathers were founders, and a woman who’d founded herself. She’d bought them iced lemonade and Elena and Jeremy’d traded bites with a bent plastic spoon. In her dreams, she’d been the otter, caged up in all of that glass, and her mother’d been laughing again. She’d been made out of sinew and blood. Her muscles had flexed and her face had been wrinkled and creased every time that she looked at her children. _I want you to know that we’re breathing,_ Elena thinks now. _You’ve left us, but we’re breathing still._

“Nobody real ever leaves you,” He tells her. “Not if you want them to stay.” 

“What about you?” Asks Elena. “What if I want you to stay?” 

“You said it yourself, sweet Elena. Isn’t this only a dream?” 

She thinks that she’s seeing it his way. The lamplight is dim, and the comforter’s pulled at the corner. He’s left a space for her there, but he’s leaving to go climb a mountain, and the gale of the harsh breeze is knocking her off of her feet. Knocking her into her body. She opens her eyes and the morning is every pale shade of gray that she had once hoped to forget. There are birds in the air and they’re singing, but she cannot make out their song. _Isn’t everything cursed here?_ , she thinks. Trods her way down the stairs, and that’s where she finds him, sobbing in Alaric’s grip. She knows what’s making him do it. He doesn’t think she will stay. Elena has nothing to tell him. 

But she thinks of the world a millenium past. How people thought that the sun moved around the Earth. The ground was a firmament to them, and the stars were a bright theater show. Nobody died when Elijah was born by driving off of a bridge. Jeremy still cries the same, with his eyes bleading whimpers and moans; and Alaric, he’s being a father. She wishes that she could tell him, but she knows the words won’t be enough. So she busies herself with those things that are normal. Washes her hands at the sink. Puts on the kettle to make her brother hot chocolate. He’s had the same mug since his birthday the year he turned six, a cat with a handle of cinnamon tail. It’s closer to him now than her. 

“Here,” Says Elena, pulling him off of Alaric, “Founder’s Day is tomorrow. Let’s have today for ourselves.” 

She sits at the table with them and sees him try not to smile. It’s almost like having a family. Alaric looks like he hasn’t slept in four days. But he is an insomniac. He’d come over for Jenna, sneak to the kitchen for light. Wanted to get in _just_ that inch more of research. Told her that it was for class. He’d never asked why Elena was up - nightmares like that didn’t need much explaining, she’d thought. She’d been too tired to hide them. They had talked in the hushed, quiet tones of compassion until the sun had come up. And he had offered to drive them to school, but Jeremy’d said he would walk. Let her put on her favorite music. She’d never played _Eleanor Rigby._ Alaric’s hair has grown longer, unkempt, and when Jeremy goes to the bathroom, she finds that they are alone. 

“It’s tomorrow,” He says, and Elena’s eyes stray to the table. She did arts and crafts at this table. Made fortune-tellers with spare paper scraps that her mother brought home from filing. Wrote happy things in them, because back then she hadn’t been sad. She’d thought that the flaps were all petals, so flowers were what she had called them. Daisies, petunias, and tulips; irises and peonies; those white gardenias their grandmother’d grown in the yard. Jeremy’s drank his hot chocolate, and his eyes had gone slack at the taste. His fingers are calloused in lead. The mark of an artist, she thinks. It doesn’t feel right to Elena, him being the one who’s not here. She feels she should be doing that. But Alaric’s hand comes up to stop her, pulling her back to her seat. 

“I’m washing the dishes,” She tells him. 

“You’re going to talk to your father,” He says, and Elena feels herself look. It is one of those moments, she thinks, when her soul’s not inside of her body, but somewhere entirely else, and she can feel her mother’s pale fingers clutching her tight to her chest. 

“I wasn’t planning on it,” She tells him, “The cemetary’s not on my list. Does Jeremy go, still?” She asks. 

“Talk to me,” Says Alaric. The pretense is gone from his face. 

“You’re going to hate me,” She says. 

“I don’t think that I could do that,” He tells her. _Whatever you’re feeling, right now, is okay._ “But I wish that I knew where you’d gone.” 

And Elena remembers him saying - _By going, wherever I felt like I should._ Is that what she’s done, thinks Elena? The bruises have faded today, but she knows that they’re still showing through, and Alaric is looking into her eyes just like a father would look. 

“Do you remember,” She asks him, “Telling me about Anubis?” 

“The jackal god,” Says Alaric, “Your heart isn’t that heavy yet.” 

“Alaric -” 

“Let them be angry,” He tells her. “You were going through hell.” 

He had been friends, once, with Damon. They’d had whiskey and talked on his couch. She wonders what that was about, what he had wanted to know that had made him so keen to the monster, and what Damon took in return. One thing she knew about him was that nothing of him came for free. It was every night that she’d gone to his house, but back then she could not have broken. She wonders if Alaric knows that the daughter he doesn’t have feels like she’s going to shatter. The pieces will scatter just like Osiris’s had. 

“Jeremy thinks that I’ll leave,” Says Elena. 

“He’s just a kid,” Says Alaric, and this is the time when she feels it. _I’m here,_ thinks Elena, _I’m home. Home._ How had she ever forgotten? It feels like the first rain of autumn, when the leaves are falling but the trees don’t want them to go. They don’t want her to. And she smells it, the feel of that rain. Sees it gathering up in the clouds. It falls and she’s walking with Caroline, trailing her way home from school. Hers is closer than Caroline’s is. _How was it?_ She asks her, and this time, Elena is sure. _It was amazing,_ she tells her. The rain is a hearbeat around them, beating like drums in the sky. _What about Matt, though?_ She asks her. Elena does nothing but shrug. _It’s not like we’re dating,_ she tells her. They haven’t talked about it. _Besides, it was only one kiss._ She’ll think about that day forever, when she wakes with limbs fuzzy, head groggy, and sight out of sync in Damon Salvatore’s bed. He’ll be gone for the day, and she’ll pick herself up and slip out the door, ignoring the feel of the floor on her feet and the sound of her phone when it rings. She’ll be seventeen, and she’ll steal. A stick of foundation that isn’t her color, the tones too yellow, too bright. She will slather it on while she’s walking, not even daring to blend it. _Did I miss something?_ Bonnie will ask her, _Is it theme day or something, Elena?_ But Elena will not look at her. She will not feel anything. Not like she’s feeling it now, when Alaric is here and he’s telling her that it’s okay. Telling her she has a family. Telling her she’s not alone. “He’ll always be just a kid.” 

“He failed,” She tells him, “Remember?” 

“I don’t think I could ever forget.” 

“He did extra credit on _vampires,_ ” Says Elena, rolling her eyes while listening for the snick of the bathroom door. 

“It’s tomorrow,” He says, and she finds herself saying, 

“I missed you. Are you still teaching, these days?” 

“The education of America’s youth is my one true calling,” He says, and Elena feels her face crack. “I mean it,” He says, “When I say that I’m here.” 

“So do I,” She says, “So do I, when I say that I will be. You’re right about him. He’s my brother, and - I missed having people,” She tells him. Alaric, she thinks, will nw. And just like that her father is saying,

“People have missed having you. You going to the Founder’s Day ball?” 

“I’m going with someone,” She says. Not knowing who, but knowing each sound of his name. Each lilt of his consanats, vowels. “I don’t know if you’ve met him yet, though.” 

“Not Damon?” He asks her. 

“Not Damon.” 

“He missed you too,” Says Alaric. “He talked about you ever day.” 

Elena knows that he did. It is Damon, she thinks. He’s never learned letting things go. _I want to keep you,_ he’d told her, _For as long as you can be kept. I want you to need me, Elena._ And need is a heartache that lives in her spired cathedral. The name of a god that she doesn’t know how to worship. Hope is a narrow road, wending its way through the city, passing the streets laid to waste. Elijah is neither of these things. He is only the person who sees them, and gives what he’s seen to the rest. _I dreamed about you,_ she’ll tell him, and he’ll talk as if he were there. She says it to him, her brother, once he is sitting back down. 

“Nobody real ever leaves,” Says Elena. “Not if you want them to stay.”

 _You did good,_ he will say. _You’ve done good._


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author’s Note: Things pick up in this chapter… quite a bit. I hope that you’ll see what I mean. This has been my favorite chapter to write so far, for reasons that will become - hopefully - obvious later on. It’s the jumping off point between the start of this story and the actual main plot of it. And did I mention, the Founder’s Ball is going to make an appearance?**
> 
> **Also: Keep in mind that after this chapter, relationship tags for this story are going to change. I do not want to spoil it just yet, but this is NOT going to just be Elejah anymore. While I understand that some of you may not like the direction this starts to go in as of the next chapter, it was always my intention to take the story where I’m going to take it, and I have tried to do it in a way that depth-fully and accurately explores the relationships between the characters. That being said, I completely understand if anyone reading this doesn’t like where I take it; I just ask that those people respectfully click out and find something else to read. As for the rest of you, I hope that you like what I decide to do with it! We’re getting there, and it won’t be much longer now!**
> 
> **As always, I don’t own TVD. It only keeps me awake.**

“I’m ready,” She says, and he gives her that roguish smile. She is wearing the blue dress, the one with the barely-there straps, and as Jeremy steals away, she remembers the lessons in dancing. It is about the intimacy of almost but not quite touching. The graceful, elongated motions that come out of yearning and want. Elena’s not used to the feel of the dress. The fabric is clingy and smooth. She is even less used to Damon, smart in a three-piece and staring at her like she’s holding his life in her palms. _I’m doing this for my mother,_ she thinks, as she lifts up her trail and makes her way to the floor. _I am dancing for someone who can’t._ Her mother had been the prettiest dancer - she had watched her dance with her father, once. A few times, fifteen or ten. He had spun her around in his arms and she’d looked up at him in awe. She doesn’t think Damon knows what awe is, but some foolish part of her wishes that he’d prove her wrong. 

“You’ll be fine,” Jeremy tells her, as she snaps her way back to the drive. She is not wearing the blue dress. She isn’t wearing a dress to begin with. She has settled for leggings and skirt. 

“This is weird?” She asks, “Isn’t it?” 

“You being here?” Jeremy asks her. “Pretty weird, yeah. But the good kind.” 

_The good kind,_ Elena thinks, _That one._ She’s never known it at all. There’s a section of atoms that make up her body that wanted to just stay asleep, but she tells herself now what she told herself then as Alaric holds open the car down. _I’ll be dancing for someone who can’t._ It is the most that she knows how to do. She didn’t dream of Elijah last night, but a concrete bench in a park, and she had sat there while the moon cast its shadow and the vultures had circled and preyed. She’d looked into the eyes of a crow and thought they were glittering jewels. It had bitten one single chunk out of her finger and bathed its beak in her blood before fitfully flying away. She thinks she still feels where the tip of it touched her, as warm as a pressed copper penny. There will be dancing, and she will stand in the corner, facing their mocking, their glares. He’ll look at her just as the rest of them do. Someone to be pitied and left. She is a slice of bread left too long in a toaster. 

“You’ll be fine,” Says Alaric, in response to what she couldn’t hear. 

“I’ll go,” She says, “If they want.” 

“Only Bonnie wants that,” Says her brother. And she has been wondering, ever since then, how the two of them got so close. 

“Did she really?” She asks, “Help you look?” 

Alaric sighs. 

“She’s a very good person, your Bonnie,” He says. She can’t tell who he’s talking to. “We don’t have to talk about this right now.” 

“I asked,” She says, “I can take it.” 

And these men - her family - have reached an unspoken agreement. They’ve decided, she thinks, that she can. She sees them meet in the rear-view, fighting it out with themselves. 

“When I got together with Bonnie,” Jeremy tells her, “It was when we were looking for you. You know about the whole witch thing - “ 

“Witches aren’t real,” Says Elena. But she knows what Jeremy means. Bonnie knows things the way others breathe. It was Bonnie’d who’d told her to stay home that night. Said she was going to die. _Nobody listened to me,_ Bonnie’d told her. And that night, she hadn’t. She hadn’t wanted to stay there - Bonnie’d have asked about Matt, and how he needed better from her. She didn’t like breaking hearts, Bonnie Bennett, unless she was doing the breaking. She’d never known Bonnie to date. 

“She saw me as her dead friend’s brother,” He says, instead of continuing on. “You left that letter, Elena, but it didn’t sound anything like you. And I guess we all knew that you hadn’t been doing that well. Some days it seemed you were drowning. We started the search in the woods, out by the old Lockwood well. There’s a legend about it, about -” 

“Once every one thousand years,” Says Elena, “They say that somebody falls in.” It’s something, just like the werewolf curse, which Alaric knows all about. He told her once that it was Aztec, tied to the sun and the moon. He’d said it was only countered by aconite, so he’d kept a sprig in a jar that he locked in his desk. _Don’t touch that,_ he’d said, in one of his rare passioned fits, as if he had thought that Elena might be one; a shifter that roamed in the night. Jeremy’d drawn wolves for days after that, charcoal pencil grasping the shape of coarse fur. He’d liked doing eyes best of everything, and he’d left his sketchbook one night on his bed so that she could look through the pages. _These ones are yours,_ he had hastily scribbled on the back of a crying girl’s face. She thinks of them searching for her, their feet crunching twigs as light faded, their screams going desperate and raw, and it threatens to ruin her makeup. Then Jeremy’s squeezing her hand, and he says, 

“I can stop, if you -” 

“No,” Says Elena, “Jeremy, I need to know.” 

“You weren’t in the well,” Says her brother. “Bonnie - she thougt that you had been honest. That you were off living your life, and just needed some time with things here. But I - I didn’t want to believe that you’d left me. I wanted to think it was somebody else who had done it; who had taken my sister from me. Bonnie, she wanted to help me. She wanted to do it for you. In the end, we found out that she wasn’t.” 

Elena can picture it now. Bonnie, sitting on Jeremy’s bed, the hazy light filtered through broken-bulbed switches, the wailing springtime dischordant next to her searching, wavering scanning. Her hair falling over her shoulders, realizing sometime that he had become more to her. More than her once best friend’s brother. More than even a friend. She cannot think of them kissing, but she thinks of how happy they must have been, when love to them was new and fresh. They would have held hands, all the time. And when Bonnie talked about witchcraft, Jeremy would’ve listened, rapt in his curiousity, enthralled by his loving of her. All the while, they had been looking for her. For somebody who wasn’t there. She wonders how long it took them to finally decide she was dead. From the way that Jeremy’s speaking, she thinks that they might never have. And where was she, while her brother battled that demon? She was sleeping in random hotel rooms, looking for things worse than ghosts. _If vampires are real,_ Elena had thought, driven half from her mind with the grief, _Then somehow, she could come back._ She had started with that, a grain of salt in her hand, and stopped at a tarot card house. The curtains were gypsum maroon. The reading had been expensive, but Elena’d had money to pay; and as she was ushered into patchouli and dread, the woman had buzzed like a fly. She had looked at her cards mercilessly, and said: _Girl, go find your mother._

_What’s her name?_ She had asked. 

_Isobel._

She had taken the things that she had. Her hair in two braids. Her fingers pulling up cuticle skin like strips of paint flaking off. Her tired eyes and her fucking up and her whole life being a lie. _I’m Elena,_ she’d said, when Isobel’d opened the door. _I don’t know if you want me to be here._ Isobel never gave her an answer, and she thinks that it’s better that way. She couldn’t have heard her say no. _Are you running from someone?_ She’d asked her. Elena had told her, _I am._ She’d had everything there that she’d never wanted to have, and something that she wished she hadn’t. Isobel hadn’t loved her. She didn’t put in the time it would take. But that was the way it had gone, and Elena had thought, as she left, that this leaving might never end. That maybe this was her destiny, if there was such a thing. She had strummed the ignition of Isobel’s rust-covered truck and seen Isobel’s blood in her head. There were three lonely years after that. Three years that Jeremy’d looked through, hoping just for a glimpse. And Elena says, 

“Alaric’s right.” 

She is being hugged, then, by somebody she doesn’t know. Or maybe, she thinks, it is someone she does, but not for who he is now. 

“Elena,” He tells her, “Mom’s so glad that you made it.” 

“Thanks,” she says, trying and failing to curtsy. It seems appropriate, somehow. “It’s good to see you again.” 

Tyler’s grown out of his awkward phase. His angry and tempered one, she thinks. Acceptance is there in his walking. She remembers that summer that Mason came in, how he’d always looked one step away from killing somebody, and how they had broken the vase. Jeremy still has a scar. 

“You staying in town?” Tyler asks her. 

“Yeah,” Says Elena, “I am.” 

She hears Jeremy exhale behind her. Feels him raising the hairs on the back of her neck when he waves. And a girl is walking her way to them, a young looking girl whose curls bounce in the wind of the open pagoda. _Anna,_ she thinks. She’s seen his drawings of her. He had struck an uncanny likeness. 

“You must be Jeremy’s sister,” She tells her, squaring her up with a sharp, protective narrowing. 

“That would be me,” Says Elena. “I’ve heard all about you from Jer. Thank you for staying with him.” She says it quiet, but not so quiet that Jeremy cannot hear, and she hopes that he knows what it means. _I didn’t want you alone,_ she hopes her brother will realize. 

“What else could I do?” Anna asks. She is side-stepping her, enveloping Jeremy in a tight, old-lovers hug. Alaric’s blended away. And Elena’s alone in a room without walls, with the open air holding her up. She looks for familiar lines. Searches for familiar loudness. But Damon’s voice she can’t find. _You ask,_ he’d once told her, _I come. I’m easy like that._ Nothing about this is easy, she thinks, as she wanders into a new orbit. Her feet take her to the place that the watch will be, seemingly without wanting, and she looks at the loops of the first Damon Salvatore’s cursive. He told her about them, the original Salvatore brothers, and the woman that both of them’d loved. He said that she’d died in the war. Elena thinks about that as she waits. All of that love, and all of that maybe, gunshot and burned to a crisp. She hasn’t seen Caroline yet. What will become of the world, she wonders, when all of their fires burn out? She used to think of life like a candle. That was what it had seemed like. Because water, she’d thought - water put fires out. It didn’t steal mothers and fathers, leave behind daughters and sons. She presses her fingertips over the glass like she’d done at the otter cage. Feels the oily sweat of her nervousness smudge every letter of him. She is thinking, _I was a fool._ The party is going without her. It is a ball, she remembers, and the dancing has started by now. There are fingers in fingers. Arms that have wrapped around waists. She can feel her father’s around her, her feet secured on his feet as he spun her around the small kitchen. She had barely come up to his waist. But all of that dancing is only a ghost to her now. A phantom she sees when she blinks. There will be no more dancing for her. 

“Elena?” She hears, like the distant roar of the ocean. She is choking back her hot tears. Carol Lockwood has placed the pocket watch right the center, it’s slender hands pointing to north. North, to where Isobel’d lived. North, to where Isobel’d died. A concept as old as the lake. 

“Hey,” She tells him, “How’s the book coming along?” 

Elijah is _warm._ That is the first thing she’d noticed, and Elena thinks it hasn’t changed. _Two days,_ she thinks. _It takes longer than two days to change._ But thinking it only reminds her of Jeremy, looking at her like she might disappear the next time that he went to sleep. _I won’t leave you,_ she vows to herself. It’s the only promise she’ll ever be able to keep. She feels all his warmth and the wanting it brings, filling the room up like tinder. This time, she wonders, who will be lighting the match?

“It’s coming along,” Says Elijah. “I think that I have what I need.” He clears his throat, and she feels him approach her. “What are you doing here?” 

“Looking,” She tells him, “It helps me.” 

“The Founding of Mystic Falls,” Says Elijah. “Some people say it was cursed.” 

“Everything’s cursed here,” She tells him. “My father told me that, once.” 

“Your father sounds smart,” Says Elijah. “I didn’t think you liked history, sweet Elena.” 

“Stop calling me that,” She says. Feels the loss of it creeping in. “I’m not sweet,” She tells him, “I’m not anything, really, you know?” 

“You’re alive,” Says Elijah. “You’re breathing. Doesn’t that count for something?” 

But Elena can’t choke on that now. _Yes_ , she thinks, _I am breathing. But so many others have died._ She feels the lake water rising in her, pouring out of her ears. Flooding the floor with every time that her mother had brushed through her hair. The emptiness of the spare room in Isobel’s house. The hum of the radiator. _I don’t know what to do about you,_ Jenna’d told Jeremy once. _You’re not my mom,_ he had said. Stormed up, high, to his bedroom, thinking of nothing at all. 

“I dreamed about you,” Says Elena. 

“I figured as much,” Says Elijah. 

“You told me that they didn’t leave. That nobody real ever leaves. Does that mean that _I_ wasn’t real?” He thinks about it for a moment, and then he must shake his head. 

“You are Elena,” He tells her, “And I’m quite glad to have found you again.” 

“Am I dreaming right now?” Asks Elena. 

“You could be,” He says, “But I much prefer you awake.” 

“You aren’t angry at me?” Asks Elena. He gets a glimmer, a shudder. It clears. 

“I’ve found, in my life, that anger’s not a solution.” 

“A solution to what?” Asks Elena. 

“Many things,” Says Elijah. She wishes that she’d turn around, look inside of his eyes. She hates how well she can feel him. Loves the way that he talks. “Disappointment, mainly. I’ve been so disappointed sometimes that I thought I might take someone’s head off. But that kind of anger, you can’d do anything with it, not if you want to survive. Isn’t that what you asked me, Elena? What it was like to survive?” 

“Was it?” She asks him. It’s like she cannot remember. Elijah is tilting his head. His breath comes closer to her. 

“I didn’t know how to answer,” He tells her. “I don’t think I wanted to, much.” 

“That’s okay, then,” She tells him, feeling her knees growing weak. “I never know what I want.” 

_But this time you do_ , thinks Elena, as both of his arms slide around her. 

“Elijah,” She tells him, “I don’t -” 

“It’s a ball, sweet Elena. Humor a man?” 

“You’re not a man,” Says Elena. “How can you be a man?” 

He is flipping her over, and the universe tilts on a rift. He searches her like she has a secret, but Elijah decides he can’t find it. 

“What -” 

“Dance with me, sweet Elena. It isn’t going to kill you.” 

_Everything kills me,_ she thinks. She can hear the music floating in from outside, from where she is supposed to be. “Jeremy -” 

“Stop thinking about them,” He tells her, “All the things that are making you sad. You’re a beautiful woman, Elena. I’m surprised that you don’t like to dance.” 

“I’m surprised that you’re writing a book,” She admits. “You don’t seem like a writer to me.” 

“What do I seem like?” He asks. 

“Something old,” She says, “Something ancient. Something that knows about life.” Elijah’s lips barely quirk. “I haven’t danced since I was sixteen,” She confesses, as her wobbling legs take their cue. Elijah’s grip is solid on her, and firm. She knows that he won’t let her fall. 

“What happened when you were sixteen?” Asks Elijah. 

“Life,” Says Elena. “I was sixteen when I lost them.” 

“I’m sorry,” He tells her, fingering a stray, flowing strand. “Elena, I wish -” 

“Don’t do that,” She tells him, “Don’t wish. I wished for things every day, and none of them ever came true.” 

“What about now?” Asks Elijah. 

“What about it?” She asks him, “It’s still the same old Mystic Falls.” 

_You can’t bring them back,_ Damon’d told her. His teeth had been biting her neck, his fingers toungeing her breasts. _What do you want them for, anyways? Can’t being you be enough?_ She had wanted to push, but she’d known that he would’ve pushed harder, and so she had looked at his ceiling, imagined that it was the sky. She’d never learned constellations, so that night, she’d made up her own. Spirals of vultures and funeral roses, towering clusters of ivy. She’d seen, in those stars, the face of her mother, but she hadn’t been sure it was right. And her fingers had gone for the picture that she used to keep, but they’d closed around Damon’s back, leaving deep scores in his flesh. _There we are,_ he had told her. _That’s something I can work with._ She’s hidden her bruises, again, with something she found in the bathroom. It’s still the same old Mystic Falls. 

“Everyone’s different,” She tells him. “Everyone except me.” 

“What are you, sweet Elena?” He asks her. And Elena says, 

“I don’t know.” 

Her head comes into his chest, folds its way into his shirt, and she breathes in the smell of Elijah. How is it, she wonders, that she never just looks in his eyes? 

“May I tell you,” He asks, “What I see, when I look at you?” 

Elena finds herself nodding. 

“Good,” Says Elijah, “I was hoping that you would say that. I see a _bitch_ , Katerina.” 

Elena laughs. Then she hears. She hears and she’s shattering glass, just like the car windows had. Elijah’s eyes have gone _livid._ They are making her bare him her soul. 

“Did you think that I wouldn’t notice?” He asks her, “A thousand years I’ve spent, waiting for you. Did you really think you’d get away?” 

“I’m not Katerina,” She tells him. She can’t move a muscle, a bone. “I don’t even know her, I - _fuck._ ” He has brought the floor up to her knees. She crashes and knows her dress tears. And Elijah is staring at her, filled with horror, remorse. 

_“Elena,_ ” He says, “I’m so _sorry._ ” 

She finds herself asking,

“What are you?”, before she can make herself stop. And the last thing she sees before seeing the black is the sharp of elongated fangs. They chase her into her fainting, tearing at her like dogs. She sees cerulean, black jackets thrown over chairs. Black dresses, trousers that cling. _We are gathered here today,_ he had said, _To celebrate the life and death of Grayson and Miranda Gilbert, beloved parents and friends. What can I say about these upstanding souls that hasn’t already been said? They were avid members of the Mystic Falls community. They were passionate in their work. And they raised two children we are honored to have here with us today, who will someday bring our little town the same fierce love and unyielding vitality their parents bred within it. While this is a tragic day, we must focus now not on the past, but the future. What we can do to honor their memories, and make sure that their story, like those which they helped preserve, will be known by us here left behind._

_Is there a season for death? This is the question that over three thousand years of human experience has forced us to ask. We ask our families, our friends, and the strangers we meet on the streets, always hoping - but never expecting - that our question might someday be answered. God tells us that death is his season, our time of going back home. But if I may speak frankly, I think there’s a different answer. Death is the season of growing, when old lives turn into new lives, and willows take root once again to shelter us, the Lord’s children, in all of his love and his light. So let us turn this dark day into one filled with light and laughter as we look back upon all that Grayson and Miranda Gilbert gave to us and their family.We’ll be hearing today from those that were closest to them: From Carol Lockwood, head of the Mystic Falls Historical Society; from Jonathan Gilbert, an esteemed son of the founders, and from Elena Gilbert, the daughter her parents loved deeply, and who, perhaps, knew them best._ She had cried for the first time into a shoulder. Somebody’s shoulder, she’s sure, and the waves of it arre a slick, oily beat on the speakers. _How did you get here?_ He asks her, all sunny smiles, pretending he is what he’s not. _Come on, Elena, let loose for a change and have fun. I know that you want me, you know. I can_ smell _it on you; you reek._ He is dancing to her, dodging and parrying women. The smell of his bourbon-breath tells her, _You are the one that I want._ And Elena wants to be wanted. Elena wants to be loved. So she throws herself on him, grinds on him to the chorus and loss, feels him go hard and possessive. Let’s take this outside, Damon says, pulling her out of the club. The fog machine’s got in her lungs, or maybe that’s what he tastes like. Hating yourself. Getting lost. _You can’t get away from me, ‘Lena,_ he tells her. Someday she thinks she might try. But then she is running, and Damon is wrenching her back. Throwing her down like a shot of tequila, purpling her where she hits. _You thought you could leave?_ Damon snarls. _You thought I would just let you go? I’m not going to kiss you, Elena. I’m going to_ fuck _you tonight._

And she thinks to herself as he’s touching her skin that she asked for all this herself. She came to his door and she _asked._ That’s why he told her. _But I don’t have anywhere,_ thinks Elena. _There’s nowhere that I should go. What do you do if you don’t have a home?_ She cannot say it; Elijah will not let her speak. He sits with his back to the water, and she watches her mother float. He gets his hand on her, squeezes her palm to his tight. 

“Elena,” He tells her. He sounds as if he has been crying. “Elena, I had to be sure.” 

“I’m not Katherine,” She tells him. “Why do you all think I’m Katherine?” 

_Because life is cruel,_ thinks Elena. _Because I am paying a debt._ Not that kind of debt; the kind that makes sure when she touches Elijah, he thinks that she’s somebody else. 

“When I chose that name,” Asks Elena, “Was that when you wanted to take off my head?” 

“Not yours,” He says, “Never yours.” 

“Katherine’s?” She asks him. 

“I did.” 

“Were you -” 

“Not like they were,” He tells her, “I’d been hurt by someone before. But you knew that, did you not? I’ve been told that it shows rather clearly.” 

“It doesn’t,” She says, feeling the need to ease up his pain. “It’s just something you see when you’ve been through it yourself.” 

They lapse into silence in which she surveys the body. Back then she hadn’t looked, but she sees now that it is her mother, the thick sweater dragging her down, her hair plastered wet to her face. It was cold enough then that her breath would’ve been a white puff, and Elena had wanted to see it; wanted to grab it and hold it inside of her hand, feel every contour and edge. _I need you,_ she thinks, as the blood makes the river go pink. 

“I’m dreaming again,” Says Elena. “I liked the other dream better.” _Like you and Katherine,_ she thinks, and Elijah becomes vehement. 

“You were right about Katherine,” He tells her, “It - I’d forgotten, Elena. I’d forgotten that you had forgotten.” 

“You keep telling me that,” She says. And the words make her slip on that self-same ice, because he’s only told her it once. But Elijah is _beaming_ at her like she’s something borne down from the heavens, and he tells her: 

“It’ll come back.” 

“I don’t think I want it,” She says. 

“You need it,” He tells her, lips creasing into a frown, and she refuses, this time, to let Elijah Smith catch her. “Lovely Elena, you -” 

“Stop telling me what I need,” Says Elena. “I took what I needed. I left.” 

“And where did that get you?” He asks her. Not angrily, she thinks, unkindly. He geuninely wants to know. 

“Here,” Says Elena, “Wherever that is, anymore.” 

She dips her hand into the water and picks up the ring. It is cold. It is silver. It shines. _I want to know you,_ she thinks. _But I already know you, Elijah. I’ve already met you before._

“Am I dying, Elijah?” She asks him. 

“I wouldn’t let you,” He says.” 

“What if there wasn’t a choice?” Asks Elena. 

“There’s always a choice,” Says Elijah. 

“Fine,” She tells him, “What if I chose to let go?” 

“You’re not dying,” Elijah says, harsh and bitter, running a hand through his hair. “I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you.” 

“You hurt me,” says Elena. 

“Do I look like most people to you?” 

“Vampires,” She says, letting the words roll around. “I thought that vampires were fake. Did you know him,” She asks him, “Jon Gilbert?” 

“I’ve known them both,” Says Elijah. “I never liked either of them. The Gilbert men have always been trigger happy, regarding my kind, I’ve found.” 

“Wouldn’t everyone be?” She asks. 

“Elena -” 

“I’m not - You’re still Elijah,” She tells him. Because, in so many ways, he has only ever been that. A mystery for her to solve. A darkening thrill of allure in the shape of a kind-hearted man. He is _Elijah,_ whatever that means, and all of that is just one part of him. “I still want to know you,” She tells him. “I still want to know who you are.” 

“Elena,” He says, “I very much doubt that that is what you desire.” 

“You wouldn’t know what I desire,” She tells him. _I desire for you to be living,_ she thinks, as her mother’s corpse floats on the stream. The sweater’s been pulled from her head by the tide, and her tight-stretched underthings gleam, with the weight of the water a stone. _I desire to be someone else._ She is not Katherine. She cannot be Kahterine for him, any more than she had been for Damon, but oh, how Damon had tried. _Why can’t you kiss me?_ He’d asked her. _Why can’t you be what I need?_

_Why can’t you let me go?_ She had asked him. The bruises had lasted for weeks. 

“Is this a vampire thing, then?” She asks him, “The coming into my dreams?” 

“It’s a caring thing,” Says Elijah. “You are… important, to me.” 

Elena snorts, and she swears that he looks _affronted._

“Why do you think I don’t care for you, sweet Elena?” He asks her. “Is it because you know what I am? I have walked this world for one thousand years, and I have learned in that time that there is seldom good reason to lie. Whatever you think you have ‘done’ doesn’t matter to me, anymore. There are more pressing things in your future.” 

“Like what?” Asks Elena, “Being bled dry in your en suite?” 

Elijah hisses. Takes a step back from her. She sees his eyes stray to the point of her pulse, and her fingers are pressing against it, checking the signal inside. 

“I can’t take it,” She says, “From my wrist. Maybe I just have small veins.” 

“Maybe your life is a gift,” Says Elijah, “That likes to keep itself hidden.” 

“You _talk_ like an author,” She says. “How many books have you written, before?” 

Elijah considers her question; she can see the gears in him spin, and wonders how easy it must be for him, to track every move and emotion. He looks at her like she’s filled up with clementine pulp, something sweeter than wine which he’s giving its proper respect. And she wishes that she could tell him - _Care about me if you want, but for fuck’s sake, please don’t respect me. I don’t_ deserve _your respect._

“This isn’t my first,” Says Elijah, “But the others are quite hard to find, anymore, seeing as they’ve been destroyed.” 

“Dissatisfaction?” She asks him. 

“Sibling tension,” He tells her, shrugging his shoulders, working loose his shirt jacket. “Here,” He tells her, “You’re cold.” 

When he says it, Elena realizes she _is._ She’s wearing her ball dress, and the thin haltered straps are no match for the rush of the wind, the cool of the lake foam turning her mother’s tears salty. She turns her back to Elijah and watches her child-self cry, her wails like the wings of a seagull, the staccato lines of a newly painted sonata. She is young and she’s losing her way, and Elena’s hands itch to touch her; pull her into her arms and tell her not to make all these mistakes. _There’s a man,_ she would tell her, _A man who will say that you’re pretty. He will come to the place where you think that you’re safe and whisk you away for the night. And I need you to run, when he does it. I need you to stand up and_ sprint. She feels every mark Damon’s left on her body come back. They look out of place on a child. She is bluer, she thinks, than the lake. More battered and bruised than her mother. 

“Elijah,” She asks him, “Why do you have to be sure?” 

“It’s a very long story,” He tells her, “I’ve never told it before.” 

“You’re an author,” She says. His jacket feels warm on her shoulders, but that could just be his breath, so much softer, more enveloping, than Damon Salvatore’s is. There is no malice to it when he breathes. She thinks that he must not have to; that he does it for her benefit, so she knows some of him is still human. But there will be time for that. She remembers the earliest story she wrote, and calls it running away. _My parents,_ she’d said, _Were the kindest, smartest, most loving people I ever had fortune to know._ She had been sixteen years old, Damon’d said. Too young to have had any fortune. _Then why?_ She had asked him, _Why did it come to me bad?_ Elena feels fingers tracing the edges of them. Feels the keen blade of him, urgent. The water is making a wall. _I’ll be trapped in this cage,_ thinks Elena, _For every year that you’ve lived._

“Give it time,” Says Elijah. “Only you can come back to yourself.” 

“But I need you to help me,” She tells him, feeling the water slip in. 

“Elena Petrova,” He tells her. “You are plenty enough on your own. You are strong enough on your own.” 

She does not feel strong enough. She feels the glass like a siren, sees the ambulance bottom. Dreams about falling and wells. Elijah is gone, and his jacket is wet. The lake is soaking it through. Though she struggles, the sleeves are too long; the thickness of fabric forces Elena to sink. Underneath it she sees Damon’s fangs coming out, grazing her carotid artery, pushing themselves in and further. She sees him drinking her blood. And her blood, it pools around her, vibrant in all of its crimson, just like the curtains that hung from his four-poster bed. _Katerina Petrova,_ the picture had told her. _1864\. My name is Stefan,_ the boy with the green eyes had said. He’d held out his hand for too long, she had thought, without the stiffening of muscles. There’s a flash of silver out in the night, somewhere that isn’t the moon. They had looked exactly alike. 

And her father is saying: _What do you think about this one? Would this one be good for your mother?_ He’d not known about things like that. Colors that well-suited women. So he had turned to his daughter, her rolling eyes glued to a string, and desperately tried to connect. _I want to go back,_ thinks ELena, clawing her way through the water, shrugging the suit jacket off, _And say she looked better in green, because her skin, it looks just like mine. Her skin, it looks_ just _like mine._ He is saying, _I think that it is,_ and letting her go up the stairs. When she trips, she falls into his arms, and they are the strongest, most confident things. She still cannot understand it. He cares about her. Elijah cares about _her._ How could he _care_ about her? He is one thousand years old, and she is a girl he betrayed. He could do better than this. _If I drown here,_ she thinks, _Then he will._ Sees herself in a hospital bed, choking, sputtering for air. Two hands of dark oak have pushed it out of her chest, steadied her galloping heart. Elena feels love in them, someday. She reaches out for their hold. The breeze gets between them, yanking her like curler tines. _Shit,_ Jenna’d told her, _I’m sorry. I’m horrible at this, Elena._ She’d been drunk at eleven, but so much like her aunt that Elena’d not even cared. She had wanted, somehow, to repay her; in some way that wouldn’t be dying. She could not do it then, but she thinks that she can do it now, so she swims her way up through the blue, every bite and its indomitable agony, striking out for a lighthouse. A foothold on slippery rocks. He has left out his jacket for her, and she sees him there, with his buttoned sleeves rolled to the elbow. A stripe of his collar too rumpled. His hair has been wind-blown. It tells her that he isn’t perfect, yet he is more perfect than her. Too perfect, too knowing, too _pretty,_ for Elena to ever compete. _I am nothing,_ she thinks. 

“You are everything,” He says, “To me.” 

_To you,_ thinks Elena, _To you._

“I want you to listen to me,” She tells him. “I don’t know about your kind, Elijah. But I know about your kind, and your kind, they only hurt me. I need you to be honest with me. Do you want to hurt me, Elijah?” 

“I want to destroy you,” He says. “I want you to be happy again.” 

“I’ve never been happy,” She tells him. She has only ever been sad. She has only ever been used. She has only ever been bitten and lied to and scratched so hard that she’d thought it might leave her blind; had looked through the gash and Stefan’s car window and wondered what people would say. She had only ever tried to be that thing, a mother. _But you were a child,_ she thinks to herself, _And you could not have known better._ It hits her like fresh air in springtime, and she feels her blood drinking it in. Is this what it means, thinks Elena, to feel as though you are alive? And can dead things feel it at all? She sees the weak smile threatening and thinks he must be feeling something, so she tells him, 

“I’d like that too.” 

And she’s blinking her way back alive in the back of a black-windowed car, held in a lap, looking up into eyes that will only ever adore her, no matter what cruel things she says. He has stroked her hair out of her face, and it flows down his legs like he’s bleeding from an open wound. 

“Mikaelson,” Says Elijah, and the calmness of him tells her: _Take one more breath, just another._ His fingers are touching her neck, and she holds him there with her own. Feels her heart beating and knows that she feels it, too. The glorious thing that makes her not just one more functionless body, cold on a metal morgue table. “You wanted to know me,” He tells her, “I thought I should tell you my name.” 

She looks out the window, sees nothing. No lake, no ring, and no coffin. No blue eyes that taste like sharp danger. So she looks at Elijah, instead, wondering about her future. 

“You have plans for me,” Says Elena. He brushes her cheek. The bruise isn’t there, anymore. And she thinks, as his knuckles come out like fangs that won’t bite her: _Welcome back, sweet Elena. You’re home._

Later, there will be long nights. Days spent dying and waking and waking and dying again. Lips on her body, a body that she doesn’t want, and the roar of the sea in her ears that does not come in throuch a conch shell. Later there will be drinking, the taste of his coppery blood; road trips to Georgia and the stealing of Gilbert rings. Later there will be Jeremy, neck bent wrong on the couch, his fingers still twitching and twine. He will show her the place he was born and she’ll think that it hadn’t existed for how far past he has come. It will hug her in all its green fingers and whisper sweet nothings to her. Tell her that she can forgive him, this man who can’t know how to love. It will tell her to run, and Elena, she’ll cast it out. Pull the stake out of Isobel’s chest. Burn it to ashes with her. Later, she’ll be a liar. Later, she’ll be a hundred. Later, she’ll be alone. And Damon will say he expected as much. _What did you think you’d be getting into?_ He’ll ask her, _Messing with an Original?_ They will be at the lake house, and there will have been harsh words, the threat of a tortorous death. _I don’t want to love you,_ he’ll tell her. _Why the fuck do you think I still do?_

_Katherine,_ she’ll tell him, _Katherine._ He will push her down just enough that she feels it, the rug digging burns in her knees, and she’ll know it for what it is. A small fraction of his heartbreak, the most he could ever inflict. She will stare in his blue eyes, her system full of vervain, and wonder what else she forgot. But there will be time for that later, she thinks. She is twenty-four. She is young. And Elijah does not love her yet. If he does, it’s a slim, fleeting thing, less than the flame of a candle. She will sit up with him while he writes his book on Virginia and tries to keep her alive. When she does it, she’ll think of today. The feeling of him, when he cares. He is careful in all things, she thinks, and her life is something to him. 

She will stand at the foot of her grave.


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author’s Note: We’re careening full force into the start of the main plot for this! Things we will see in this chapter include: Lots of characters, me refusing that compulsion can be used as a godlike force, (probably) very badly translated Old English, and Damon.  
>  For those of you who don’t know me, my intention with this story was never to not ship Delena as well. I ship Delena almost as much as Elejah, and I hope that I do it justice here. This story focuses mainly on loss of memory and memory manipulation, but it also focuses(heavily, in my opinion, and I hope that it comes across) on loss and pain and intimacy and love. If the last chapter laid the foundation for the plot of this story, then I want this chapter to be viewed as laying the foundation for those things. **
> 
> **As always, I don’t own TVD. It only keeps me awake.**

She feels as if they drive for hours. In the haven of window and car seat, she thinks about how he smells. It was always familiar to her; she thinks that that’s why she did it, took his cigarette. She’d been chasing after the barest hint of Elijah’s cologne. The cleanness, the crispness, of him. He reminds her of ripe summer apples, but the way he’s attuned to her says a good deal other things. She starts crying sometime around an hour. His fingers wipe off the tears. But her face, it just keeps getting wet. It is raining on her, and she cannot hold it inside her. 

“Elena,” He tells her, “I’m sure you have questions, I -” 

“Who else knows?” Asks Elena. 

“Your family,” He tells her, “The Salvatore brothers. The witch.” 

“Bonnie?” She asks, and he nods. 

“She’s from quite a powerful line,” He admits, “They came down from Salem. Having her on our side proved invaluable, once.” 

“And when was that?” Asks Elena. Elijah huffs out a sigh that she will not reflect on. 

“When we needed you out,” Says Elijah, “So that you wouldn’t be killed.” 

If she wasn’t so tired, she’s sure that her jaw would be dropped. 

“Who was going to kill me?” She asks him, but Elijah tightens his hold. 

“It is of no concern anymore,” He tells her. He is clutching at her far too desperately, she thinks, for that to ever be true. _What am I?_ She wonders, _What horror must I be, to get everyone I love killed?_ It occurs to her they haven’t kissed yet, not that she remembers at least, and she thrills at the thought of his lips when they finally meet hers. She sees the plush of them, velveteen like his voice, and the paleness of him is a beauty that goes beyond death. _We make a good contrast,_ she’ll tell him, crashing to him like a meteor falling to earth. Perhaps he, though, is the meteor. She is too tired to move. 

“Shh,” He is telling her, “Sleep.” 

“I couldn’t possibly,” Says Elena. “I feel like -” 

“I know what you feel like,” He tells her. _I can_ smell _it on you; you reek._ “You have been through quite an ordeal. Sleep, sweet Elena. I’ll wake you up when it’s time.” 

Somehow, she does not doubt him. But first, she thinks, she must know. 

“You didn’t give me an answer,” She tells him. “Who was trying to kill me?” 

He tells her, 

“Someone who won’t.”

“What if I dream?” Asks Elena. 

“You will not dream. I’ll make sure.” 

And perhaps she had already known he was good for his word. She has seen that honor in him. In clothes and in breakfast and leaving her body alone. In the snick of portruding fangs absent. And in other things, too. The fury tamped down in his eyes when he’d seen her, bleeding in Damon’s white shirt, replaced by his needing assurance. He is honorable, thinks Elena. An honorable something, if not an honorable man. When Elena opens her eyes she is in a hotel room, still wrapped up in his jacket. It wasn’t a part of the dream, she notices now, though at first she had thought that it might be. It is _that_ smell that she has been chasing, the perfect fit of its largeness on her that speaks to Elijah’s own form. She doesn’t remember feeling this way, but something tells her she had, in that part that she cannot remember. She must have felt _safe_ with him. The darkness had been a comfort to her; the waking, a blanket of peace. 

“Good morning,” He tells her. She scents the air cautiously. Trying for something, anything, that will break the good tension between them. “You’re feeling better today?” 

“I - yeah,” She tells him, “I am.” Her fingers stray up to the still missing bruises. She isn’t used to her second skin feeling this smooth. 

“Elena?” He asks ehr. There’s worry there, she thinks, just beneath the concern. “Are you sure that you’re feeling alright?” 

“Yes,” She says, “Just… surprised.” 

“About what?” Asks Elijah.

“The bruises. It usually takes them much longer.” 

She looks down when she says it; he flinches. _He’s hurt,_ thinks Elena, _You’ve hurt him. Just like everyone else._ Was she born like this, she wonders? This worse than a vampire _thing?_ She has drained far more, she thinks to herself, than the blood Damon Salvatore’s taken. 

“How many times?” Asks Elijah. 

“You stayed with me,” Says Elena. She’s not as deft as he is with this; the shifting into a new gear, but she hopes that he’ll know what she means. 

“Of course I stayed, sweet Elena.” 

“I can’t talk about it,” She says. “I don’t - I just can’t, Elijah, I’m sorry.” 

“Do you think you could someday?” He asks her. 

“I don’t know, Elijah,” She tells him. “It was hard for me, all of that.” 

“I know that it was,” Says Elijah. He is soothing her into the lull of his arms. She wants to fall into them. She had known when she woke he was there; she had not needed to look. 

“How close were we?” Asks Elena, “Before you made me forget?” 

“It wasn’t me,” Says Elijah. “I would never do that to you. It may be hard for you to believe this, Elena, but it was you who chose to forget.” 

“Excuse me?” She asks him. 

“We talked through it all,” Says Elijah. “There was no good solution at that point. Have you any idea what you’re like, sweet Elena? You are the fiercest, most noble girl that I’ve ever met in my life. We have been through a good deal together; reaching that place took a very long time, for a human. You were so very young then, Elena, but every ounce yourself. You’re a martyr, Elena. I knew even then that making that choice would destroy you, but it was your choice to make. I could not have taken it from you.” 

“Elijah -” 

“So when you told me that you’d made the choice to forget; get out of town, disappear? I convinced the Bennett girl to help you. She was involved with your brother at the time, and though she never approved of our lifestyle, your making that choice passed a test in her mind, of some kind or another. I always meant to ask her about it, but there ended up not being time.” 

“In seven whole years?” Asks Elena. 

“Much happened in those seven years,” Says Elijah. “There was one reason, and one reason only, that neither I nor the Salvatores raised objection towards you and your choice. We understood that if you left and felt that you couldn’t come back, it would free us up to do all in our power to save you. You couldn’t die for us, sweet Elena, if you didn’t know it was an option. If you didn’t even know that you were in danger.” 

“You’re telling me,” Says Elena, “That I chose to have my memories erased and I didn’t once, in seven years, realize that something was up?” 

“ _Forgytel ġeinniġe’_ , He tells her, “The spell was not of Ms. Bennett’s invention. It was an old English curse found inside of a grimoire. It translates to ‘forgetting, replacing’. The intention behind it is very sinister - it was created as a form of revenge against a witch’s adultrous lover, forcing them to forget the whole of their life, save for those details which the witch wanted preserved. The rest would then be replaced by any memories of said witch’s choosing, though those that were based around real life events made the spell’s results much more… favorable, or so Bonnie claimed at the time. What it really was, Elena, was storytelling. A new story was made up for you, one which incorporated varied real life events but also a multitude of pre-fabricated ‘memories’ that you’d believe you had experienced.” 

“So that was the reason I didn’t catch on?” Asks Elena. 

“Part of it,” He confesses, “The other part is much simpler, I think, than that. Due to the spell’s nature, there were some latent consequences. Bonnie claimed she might be able to undo them someday, though at the time, fixing things was a much more pressing issue than whatever ill-effects the spell would have left behind.” He must hear the panic of her, because he is stroking her forehead, hushing her gentle and still. “Not dangerous, sweet Elena. I would not have let you come to danger, not in those days, and not now. But - mentally, there were risks with performing the spell, as there are whenever the craft is involved. In the case of _Forgytel ġeinniġe,_ the spell is set to last for a predecided amount of time, and Ms. Bennett did not know how to change it.” 

“How long?” Asks Elena. Her throat is sandpaper dry.

“Twelve years,” He says, “Give or take. There are differing accounts. Depending on who you ask, the effects can begin, in some cases, to fade after only six years or seven, provided strong emotions are being repressed. The more weak-willed, cowardly, and evil the curse’s victim is, the longer the spell’s effects last. We were banking on that, sweet Elena. You are none of those things in the slightest.” He averts his eyes, his fingers still on her flesh. “In other cases, though, the spell lasts much longer than those twelve years. And that was - is - an eventuality that we had to prepare for, Elena, by making sure that the life we gave you wouldn’t leave room for doubt. So between the six of us - Myself, your brother, the Salvatores, Bonnie, and Alaric - we built in a kill switch. A way to check up on you. While the rest of us focused on getting you _safe,_ Ms. Bennett put her attention towards trying to find a way to reverse the spell’s effects at will. The search was… not entirely fruitless, if she is to be believed.” 

“A kill switch,” She tells him. “That would be me coming home.” 

“Elena,” He tells her, “You must be so angry at me, but I want you to know -” 

“How much of what I know is real?” Asks Elena, “And how much of it is the sick _story_ you wrote of my life? Are my parents even dead?” 

“No,” Says Elijah. 

“Stop it,” She tells him, “With that - that ‘nobody real ever leaves’ _bullshit._ I need you tell me the _truth!_ ” The crack of her hand on his face is a bane in the room. A laughter that rings in her ears. Elijah looks _stunned_ , but something in it seems to please him. Elena cannot tell what. 

“I did not mean it that way,” Says Elijah. “Forgive me. Your real parents are not dead, Elena. They are very much still alive. However, it is not my place to tell you that story. It belongs to somebody else.” 

“Who?” Asks Elena. 

“Alaric,” He tells her. “Should you choose to learn more about them, Alaric is who you should ask. For now, though -” He pauses. Swallows. “Elena,” He tells her, “I must ask you a question, and I must know what you would answer. In order to make your life story more - as it were, realistic - everyone contributed some of the memories. I _need_ to know if you’ve begun to remember, but -” 

“You can’t,” Says Elena, a cold fear dawning in her, “Until you know what I think I do.” 

“I would not ask it of you,” Says Elijah. “It is your mind, your body, your soul. I promised myself, once, that it would have sovereignty.” 

“So?” Asks Elena.

“So I need you to offer,” He tells her, “Whenever you feel like you can.” 

She bites at the edge of her tongue; plays through it all in her mind. The things that she once thought were true. The things that she thinks still might be. And the things that she knows are, the ones that don’t make any sense. 

“Jeremy is a terrible actor,” She tells him. Her steady voice threatens to break. 

“I had to protect you,” He tells her. “We agreed - You know what I am.” 

“You’re honorable,” Says Elena. She’s beginning to figure it out. 

“Yes,” Says Elijah, “I am. I proposed - that we should have as few people privy the secret as possible, so that, if push came to shove, only one could expose you. The one least likely to do so. I am an Original, and if push came to shove, I could last for a good many years.” 

“You made them forget,” Says Elena. 

“Not the same way that you were made to,” He says. “It is a ‘quirk’, you could say, of our species. Vampires call it compulsion.” 

“How does it work?” She is asking. 

“It doesn’t,” He says, “If precautions are taken against it. There’s an herb that can be worn or ingested - vervain. I made sure to procure some for you, before you took your leave.” He shoots a glance towards her mother’s old bracelet, and she finds herself thumbing at it. “As for how it works - Again, I am not the person to ask. I know how to use it, but explaining the mechanism by which it functions is sadly out of my grasp. I am hardly a teacher, Elena.” 

“Alaric was,” Says Elena, “I - was he?” 

“History,” Says Elijah. 

“Right.” 

“What was your theory?” He asks her. 

“Vampire hunter,” She tells him, “Given - all of the stakes.” 

Elijah laughs. 

“Remind Mr. Saltzman, the next time you see him, that I give him my best regards. That was a good detail to leave.” 

“Why did he leave it?” She asks him. 

“I’m afraid you would have to ask him.” 

Elena moistens her lips. 

“What did you leave?” She asks, but Elijah is shaking his head. 

“My sweet, lovely Elena,” He tells her, “There’s so much of us out there for you. I will not let myself cheapen it.” 

“What if I just want to know,” Asks Elena, “Everything, who you are?” 

“That can be arranged,” Says Elijah, “Provided that you remain with me.” 

“Elijah -” 

“We were getting to that, back then. The question of who I am. You were teaching me that, Elena. How to truly be human again, and what kind of human I’d be. If you would be so amenable, we could pick up where we left off.” 

“Wouldn’t that be - I don’t know,” She asks, “Scandalous?” 

He looks as if he has been _stabbed._

_“Elena,”_ He says, “I meant only that I should very much like to be close to you - to be friends with you, once again. I would never presume to take from you that which you’d not freely give.” 

“Damon would have,” She tells him. Hears her heartbeat grow loud. “He - the things that he _did to_ me, I can’t -” 

“If it helps you,” He tells her, “The way that you talk about him - I sincerely doubt that Damon Salvatore would have stooped so low towards you, Elena. I have had my share of disagreements with him, but it is impossible to me.” 

“You think someone gave me those memories?” She asks. She has the bruises on her; she has had all the bruises on her, and could not have imagined the pain. Besides, he has already done it; Elijah has seen well enough. 

“Yes,” He tells her, “I do.” 

“Who would have -” 

“Elena,” He tells her, “I could not possibly say. Rest assured, however, that if what you think he has done is _true,_ I will rip him apart limb from limb.” 

“I won’t let you do that,” She tells him. It’s coming out like she’s talking through speakers. Old speakers, made out of wood. The world has gone fuzzy, the grain of her wood is coarse. But Elena can’t bring herself, just now, to care. _I’ll be better than you were,_ she thinks, to Damon and all of the rest. _I’ll take back what you’ve stolen from me._ It would be so easy to put Elijah with them, but when he is here with her, talking so tenderly to her, she knows that he is her lighthouse. The one she’ll come back to, every time a new wound opens up. Still, thinks Elena, the memories burn inside her. _I never loved you,_ she’d told him. If she hadn’t said it, why would he hate her so now? Or had he, too, thought she was Katherine, borne back from her grave of the damned? She finds herself overheating; shucks off his jacket, lets her arms into the air, and it dances across them like lovers, glad for the gift of salvation. She takes a good look around. 

He’s booked them a room at a five star hotel, and she thinks to herself, through it all, that he would be that kind of man. She has not seen him anywhere suitless; doubts that she would’ve back then. But she cannot tell how Elijah’d been then. There’s a hole in her mind where the man that she might have loved lives, chewed up by termites and moths. Has she touched his body, she wonders? Has he touched hers in return? Grazed his fangs against her, bitten down? The bed that she’s in is incredibly soft, yet her legs yearn to wander and stretch. Every lie that she’s built herself off of sticks to her skin like dried sweat. Every tear she will shed for it lingers in her hair like oil. 

“I need to shower,” She tells him, pushing herself up to sitting. “Can I -” 

“Of course,” Says Elijah, “The taps here are finnicky, sometimes. Let me know if you need any help.” 

“How would you know?” She asks him, “It’s not like you’ve been here before.” 

Elijah looks down, then looks up. 

“Elijah?” She asks him, “Where are we?” 

“Somewhere you’re safe,” Says Elijah, “With which you’re already familiar. I’ve asked the others to join us -” 

“Why?” Asks Elena. 

“To restore to them what they’ve lost,” Says Elijah. “I’m tired of waiting, Elena. I’ve been told that I’m patient, but I can also be ruthless, and you are important to me. I can’t wait any longer for you.” _Twelve years,_ thinks Elena, _Twelve years._ It may be familiar to him, but she is as lost here as she’s ever been; as pulled apart as she has been since waking up here this morning. 

“I need to shower,” She tells him again, sliding out of the bed. Her legs are surprisingly steady. They take her where she needs to go, as if she had been there already. There’s a bright shaft of sunlight coming in through the window. It’s butterfly curtains part like lips ready to kiss, tossed by a low, errant breeze. It is not a hotel room at all. When it hits her, she almost expects to start sizzling, burning apart as if she, herself, is one of them. But it welcomes her back like a friend, so she stands in its warmth for a moment, feeling it dry her regrets like sidewalk squares after a rain. 

“I think,” Says Elena, tasting the words on her tongue, “That I was in love with you, once.” 

“Elena,” He starts, but she stops him before he can reach her. 

“Don’t tell me I’m wrong,” Says Elena, “For feeling that way, about you. I can’t explain it, Elijah, but I know that we were something, once. We were something once, don’t you think?” She is angry, now, at the sun, for being so friendly to her instead of killing the pain. Her brother will get all his memories back, and he’ll hate her the more for them, she thinks, the things that she did in her past which still will be locked from her knowing. And Damon. _God,_ she thinks, what about Damon? What kind of person is he, if not the one that stalks through her rose-coloured nightmares? Had he been kind to her, a confidant? Could Elijah be _right_ about him? 

“How did it heal?” Asks Elena. He tells her, 

“Vampire blood. You didn’t need very much.” 

And a stray voice flits through her head: _You have to die with it in your system._ He could snap her neck right now, thinks Elena, and she would remember it all. It would be as quick as flicking the latch on the window, stepping through into the sun, and planting her feet on thin air. But she will not do that to him; she has left them too long already, without it becoming forever. 

“Go,” Elijah says, “Shower. I’ll lay some things out for you.” 

“You don’t need to do that,” She tells him, “I don’t think that these ones are dirty.” 

“Perhaps they aren’t,” Says Elijah, “But I do know that they are not yours. It would make you more comfortable.” 

“Okay then,” She tells him, “I -” 

“Go,” Says Elijah. 

She thinks, as she moves to the hallway, that she hears him whispering something that sounds like, _I know that we were._ But she pushes it, wary, away. Trains herself towards it, the promise of water and soap. Finds herself running to it. Strong arms are on her, gripping like phantom tree branches, and Elena is whirled around. 

“I -” 

“We need to talk,” Damon says. He is flint and steel and black leather; a beating, palpable _fear._

“I don’t want to talk to you, Damon,” She tells him, squirming to get herself free. As if he senses her fleeing, his strong grip loosens a bit. 

“No,” He tells her, “I’m sorry, but -” 

“But what?” Asks Elena, “Just because you’re desperate, that doesn’t mean I want to see you. I don’t want to _see_ you again. How can you not understand that?” 

She wants to cry, wants to rage, wants to scream. But something registers, then. The way that he’s looking at her. The agony she sees within him. And another thing, buried deeper, which makes her aching heart yearn. 

“Elijah told me,” He says, “That you - that you think I’ve hurt you, Elena.” 

“I know that you did,” Says Elena, summoning all of her courage. “I remember you doing it, Damon.” 

“Whatever you think you remember,” He tells her, “I would never have done that, alright?” 

“They why did you?” She asks him. It makes him draw his breath short. 

“I thought -” 

“That I left you?” She asks him, “Or that I was somebody else? I remember more than you think that I do, and I’d like it if you would let _go._ ” 

He drops her wrist like it’s burned him. Tears are gathering in him, like he is the biggest, most powerful storm cloud. She remembers the days when he was. When pain arched like lightning and black cats around him, striking at small, random veins. She has always hated it, thunder. Hid under bedsheets that were not Elijah’s as each distant rumble grew close. 

“How did you get here so quickly?” She asks him. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?” 

“Because you’re Elena,” He tells her. 

She only wants to be _clean._

“What kind of answer is that?” 

“I-” 

“I don’t remember you, Damon, except for when you were cruel. _Please_ just leave me alone.” 

“Fine,” He tells her, “If that’s what you want. But you will remember me, someday. And I can promise you something, Elena. When that day comes you’ll regret being frightened of me.” 

“I don’t think I will,” Says Elena, choking out seven long years of the blood and the pain and the nightmares before she hears what he’s said. _Because you’re Elena,_ he’s told her - and what is she, really, if not that weakling who cannot stand up for herself? _You see the best in everybody,_ Damon had told her once. _You should stop that already._ “But -” 

“But what?” Damon asks her, echoing her own words back. 

“I’ll give you a chance,” Says Elena, “If it turns out that you weren’t.” 

“I know that you will,” Damon tells her. “That was all that I meant.” 

He is giving a smile to her. A genuine grin, with no hint of his wanting to hurt her, and it makes her wonder if maybe, just maybe, Damon is telling the truth. Whatever it is, though, he stands there like something which she can reclaim; something which now would not do it, if she chanced to get close. She is throwing her arms around him like she knows him; knows him as what he is not, and he keeps a loose tightness returning. He’s keeping himself in control. He has not truly relaxed. But when she pulls out he gives her a nod, like he knows what it means that she’s done it, how hard she had fought with herself. 

“I’m going to talk with Elijah,” He tells her, “He told me to say that we’ll be downstairs when you’re ready.” He breezes his way past her, then, leaving her with the comfort of him that she’d not in a million years thought of. _There’s something wrong with my head,_ thinks Elena. Nothing else can account for the way that he held her, as if she were precious to him, so precious that he could give up, for a day, on being so much less than human. And Elijah was right about one thing. The taps here are finnicky. She wrestles with them for three minutes before they will loosen. Stands for far longer under the hot, wretched spray. She likes to imagine it washing away every untrue moment inside her; every hurt that she feels which was wrong. Likes to imagine it pouring out of her eyes and her ears and her nostrils. Silvery-clear, like moonlight mixed into blood. She watches it go down the drain. Drain out like her mother’s thick makeup, from drain to creek to stream to river to pond to lake and to ocean. Float out there like all of her hot, salty tears. They are probably drinking it, blood. They are vampires, after all. If she focuses, she can almost hear them through the roar of the shower spray, talking in rough, calloused whispers. She might never have said it out loud, but Elena _has_ broken his heart. 

When she joins them, freshly dressed with her hair brushed out and the second chance firm in resolved-ness, she finds that they are not alone. 

“I’m sorry,” She says, before any of them can speak. “I’m so, so sorry for everything that I’ve done.” Elijah is standing impassive, but Damon’s forehead is creasing, wrinkling up in a frown. And he is the first one who says it; not her brother, or Bonnie, or the father she still shouldn’t have: 

“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about. This was _our_ fault, Elena.” 

“No,” She tells them. “Elijah said this was _my_ choice. Let me apologize for it.” 

Elena’s life teeters, hung on a dark precipice. Damon, she sees, is still frowning. And Bonnie stands up, sits down, stands up again. Walks to the place where she’s standing and says, in the glory that witches can muster: 

“Nobody thinks that, Elena.” 

“You thought it, Bonnie,” She tells her, “You all thought it just yesterday. You don’t have any less reason to think of me that way now. I - whatever I’ve done, it must have been so much worse, I -” 

“It wasn’t,” Says Bonnie. 

“And no offense,” Pipes up a voice from the couch, “But we did kind of do it together.” 

“Seven years,” Says Elena, “You thought I was gone. I was the _only_ thing you had left -” 

“And you chose,” Bonnie says, cutting off Jeremy’s protest, “To make sure that someday you still would be.” 

“What was my _life?_ ” Asks Elena. The walls of this ancient house warping and hissing and hunting for her like static, the velvety whisper of demons broke loose from hell. And her parents are dying again. Jeremy’s crying again, if she is sure it’s not her. The feedback loop of her glass body screaming as Damon lowers or not - 

“It was shit,” Damon tells her. “Everyone knew it was shit. And through all of that shit, which you didn’t have any control over, you were still the person who would’ve died for everyone else. Your life was the one that valued us all so much that you would never have hesitated to take our places, no matter what you would lose. Nobody’s like that, Elena. Nobody except you.” 

“I don’t want to be,” Says Elena. Knows that it makes her sound selfish, and helpless, and weak. “I need to know who I _am._ ” 

“So do I” Says Alaric. “So does everyone in the world.” 

“Is my mother alive?” Asks Elena. 

“She’s a vampire,” Jeremy says, stealing the words from his mouth. “And a horrible one, at that. She did the ‘emotionless’ thing.” 

“Just like you did,” She mumbles, and sees Damon stagger, his eyes flying up to Elijah’s. “What about -”

“I’m not going to tell you,” Jeremy says, “Because I don’t want you to puke.” 

“Is it really that bad?” Asks Elena. 

“Yes,” Five voices chorus. She breathes and the air smells like _rightness,_ for once. Is that what she’s waded through all of the water for? The chance to get her head above it and see, in the shade of a blackling, pulsing swirls of purple and neon and _blue._ Not the blue of the water, the dank blue of pulling her down, but a blue as sharp and as hot as a fire, rising its way through her ladders of bone; until, like a phoneix, she’s reborn from those memory ashes. 

“Are there others that I should know about?” Asks Elena, grasping at what she can find. 

“Caroline,” Bonnie says. 

“Anna,” Her brother chimes in.” 

“ _Caroline?_ ” Asks Elena. “She’s married to Tyler. Tyler Lockwood wouldn’t marry a vampire.”

“Normally not,” Says Alaric, “But there is the whole werewolf thing.” 

“ _Ha,_ ” Says Elena, “Look, I appreciate you trying to - lighten the mood, or whatever, but -” 

“The curse of the sun and the moon?” Asks Alaric. “I know that you know what it is.” 

“Yeah,” She tells him, “The Aztec one? That’s not -” 

“I’m a vampire,” Damon tells her. “So is Elijah. So is your best friend. And so is your brother’s ex-girlfriend. Tyler Lockwood being a _werewolf_ is the hill that you’re going to die on?” 

“I don’t know,” Says Elena, “I have to die sometime, right?” 

“I would wait,” Damon says, with a hint of his telltale smirk. “There are still a fuckton of hills.” 

“Okay,” Says Elena. “So werewolve are real. You,” She says, turning to Jeremy, “Need to date someone normal - Sorry,” She says, at Bonnie’s raised eyebrow, “But I’m still your sister, and I still want you to be safe.” 

“She didn’t _turn_ me, Elena.” 

“Yeah, but you would’ve let her,” She says, to which nobody disagrees. “ _Christ,_ I’m getting a headache.” 

“Elena -” 

“No,” She says, knowing not who has spoken. “It’s fine. It’s just - It’s a lot to hear, all at once.” 

“I know,” Says Elijah, “But you’re doing so well, sweet Elena.” 

Nobody looks at him twice. Nobody bats an eye. _That answers that,_ thinks Elena. _We totally_ were _something, once._ She is only surprised that Damon seems not to be jealous. But Elijah is keeping her solid, and he’s brought her water and _Advil,_ which she takes with one grateful gulp. 

“Whatever I did,” She asks, “Even if it wasn’t my fault. Do you think that you could forgive me?” 

“Yes,” Says Damon, immediately. “Seriously, you _don’t_ need to ask.” 

“Shut up,” Bonnie says, “I forgive you. But after all this is over, I’m done with helping out vampires. I _mean_ it this time,” She says. 

“Noted,” Elijah says smoothly. There’s a tension there in the room. 

“For everything,” Jeremy says, “Except for when you broke my _iPod._ ” 

“I remember that,” Says Elena, “Did you leave that there on purpose?” Jeremy shrugs. “You’re an ass,” Says Elena, “But thank you.” 

“Anytime,” Jeremy says. 

And then she turns to Alaric, whose head is down in his hands.

“It isn’t you,” Says the man who had once loved her aunt. “That I can’t forgive for all this.” 

“Alaric -” 

“I only wanted to find out what happened to her. I never asked for any of this. But yeah, Elena, I forgive you. I guess it just is what it is.” 

Damon is glaring at him. Elijah, she thinks, might be too, though his glares never show on his face. He is not one, she thinks, for showing those things which he feels. 

“Sorry,” He says, “But I would’ve liked to remember.” 

“You would’ve _liked_ to remember losing the love of your life?” Damon asks. “I knew that you were cynical, Rick, but my _God_.” 

“Seeing as you were the person that turned her, you have no right to speak.” 

She doesn’t know that she’s said it until the whole room goes silent. 

“I - I don’t know how I -” 

“Neither do I,” Bonnie says, “But I’ll count that as a good sign.” 

“Did he ever apologize?” Asks Elena, looking straight at Alaric. 

“Tried to,” He says, and leaves it at that. “I was over it all by that point.” 

As if _that_ could have happened, she thinks, but keeps the thought to herself. 

“Do you want him to do it again?” 

“Elena - “ 

“I’m asking you honestly,” She says. Damon looks at her expectantly, and a shiver goes through her body. Whatever she asks him to do, thinks Elena, he will do it without preamble. 

“Forget it,” She says. “Could you do it for me, though, sometime?” 

“I’m sorry that I killed your mother,” He says. 

“Accepted,” She tells him. “But trust me, Damon, she wasn’t.” She is saying it for Alaric, too, and wishes that she could look at them both while she speaks. “Even what I remember about her was… rough.” 

“Bad parents?” He asks sympathetically. “I’ve been there. If you ever want to talk about it -” 

“I still don’t know that you weren’t,” Says Elena, softly and dull-ly, hating herself for having, almost, forgotten. 

“The offer’s still open,” He says, with a twitch of his lips, and - She will ask him, later, how long he’d been next to her, holding her hand. She’ll ask Elijah why on earth he had _let_ him. But for now, thinks Elena, she’ll savor the small, gentle touch. Hold it to her like a pearl; something that came from an oyster. She’s beginning ot think that she had been wrong when she’d that she never loved him. But she cannot say it now. Sandwiched between them, these two different men who both make her feel such strange things. It has nothing to do with forgetting, she thinks; not with what she’s forgotten, because emotions cannot be. They are wild creatures, things of their own. You feel them once and they make a home in you forever, years past vampires live. He squeezes and she squeezes back, feels the shock of him crest and then fade. Who she is, thinks Elena, is someone. A person like everyone else. And maybe she has done worse things than all of the resst, but maybe life has been worse; dealt her a hand that she could not have one with and sent her along on her way. She wishes, though, that it were her. Aches for something to blame. 

“Who was she?” Elena asks, “Katherine?” 

“A bitch,” Bonnie tells her, the same way Elijah had said it. 

“Who looks just like me,” Says Elena. “How does that even work?” 

“Magic,” Says Bonnie, daring her to go on. “Isn’t that why we’re here?” 

“We’re here,” Says Elena, “Because Elijah’s impatient.” She feels Damon stiffen. Gives him another slight squeeze. _Not like that,_ thinks Elena. _Not like you used to be._ Saying it, she thinks, would make Damon crumble to dust. 

“Actually,” Jeremy says, “We’re here because Bonnie made headway.” 

“On the spell?” Asks Elena, “You can give me my memories back?” 

“Keep in mind,” Says Elijah. Breathes it warm and wet into the hollow of ear. “That even if she says no, it will be headway nevertheless.” 

_I can’t,_ thinks Elena. Saying otherwise would be a lie. And she will not lie to an honest man, so she pretends she hasn’t heard him and looks at Bonnie instead. Remembers her saying it wouldn’t only be nice; that love wasn’t something to wait for, not something to hope you would get. She is sitting near to her brother, and his arm’s thrown over her shoulder. She fits there like she was made to be there. The same way that she’s feeling now, even though it is wrong, and she wonders if Bonnie knows something about it, the pull that she feels to them both. It’s fighting in her like two jaguars, claws out and desires untamed. She gives Elijah her other hand, feels that it’s colder than Damon’s, more confident in itself, less needing to feel and be felt. 

“Well?” Asks Elijah, “Do try and hurry it up.” 

“I’ve been reading through all of the grimoires,” Says Bonnie, ‘That were left in the old Martin house. I found some interesting things.” 

“Like?” Damon asks her, “How to undo the spell?” 

“No,” Says Bonnie, “But I found out some other things.” 

“Will they help me?” She asks her. Bonnie shakes her head firmly. 

“I thought that they could,” Bonnie says, “I mean. Elena. They _could._ But I don’t think you should do it. It isn’t a price you should pay.” 

_Of course,_ thinks ELena, _I’d have to pay something for this._

“So we wait,” Says Elena, trying to get out ahead, “We wait, and in a few years, they’ll come back.” 

“If they do,” Bonnie tells her. “Sometimes it can take decades. I guess what I’m saying is that I think I need some more time. I think I can find something else.” 

“What did you find, though?” She asks her. Remembers all of his morals, the ones she’d instinctively _known._ Elijah would not lie to her. Elijah would let her decide. “If there’s something that I can do - I won’t let you keep that from me.” 

“I’m sorry,” Says Bonnie, “But I’m not going to tell you.” 

“It’s my choice,” She says, “It’s my _whole life_ Bonnie. Why would you take that from me?” 

There are some times, she thinks, when time stops, and birds freeze with wings blurring out. The clock stops ticking, like it did on Wickery Bridge, and a silence comes in that humans could never have known. All that she knows is the nest of their fingers, pale and entirely _hers,_ artfully laced with her own. 

“Because,” Bonnie tells her, “I don’t want any more of your kind.” 

Elena does not think it’s funny, and yet she still finds she laughs. The fingers convulse and constrict and he _laughs_ while he lowers himself, just as if it wasn’t her but some body beneath him, anyone’s body to use and be used, and the pain of it rips into her like the length of his ivory fangs. They make Damon’s bedroom an ocean of red. She can see it out the car window, tinted by the blood moon. She swims in an oily sea; but it is only her face, pressed into Damon’s black leather. She could not be nearer to him. The boarding house has a piano. Sometimes she’d sneak out to play it, feel the keys under her fingers and think to herself of the music, the way that its notes could not judge her. They are teeth and then they are fangs, sinking into her neck. He gives her no time to adjust. She fumbles with the keen latch of the window. It opens on the second try. She takes one last look behind her, and knows that she is alone. Always, she has been alone. He rolls his way off of her body. She plants her feet on open air. But she only falls as far as they let her, and there is a desperate _Elena!_ It is not calm, and it is not composed. It brings her back to herself. 

“Get _off_ me!” She tells him. Pushes her way from his arms. “Why can’t you just go rot in hell?” 

Elena thinks she is crying, but she cannot feel the tears.


	5. Interlude - When She Was Seventeen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author's Note: So. For everyone who's decided to stick with this story, thank you for reading and being here for the journey. It's official, and I can confirm it: This interlude is my favorite thing that I've ever written. Ever. For anything. While I realize that it is a shift in focal point, please remember that it _is_ an interlude - an opportunity to take a step back and view these characters from a different perspective - and also keep in mind that I absolutely loved writing this! I hope that you guys continue to enjoy this story - I have the next chapter written and edited, and will be posting it early to compensate for the shortness.**

When she was seventeen, Elena slept in his bed. It had started, he still remembers, as nothing but grabbing his hand. He hadn’t known what she’d meant by the gesture, not after everything, but Elena’s pull had insisted. _What about Stefan?_ He’d asked her. _I don’t love your brother,_ she’d said. Also: _You have a big bed._

_What can I say?_ He had told her, _A man likes sleeping in comfort._

_Will you stay with me, though?_ She had asked him. He’d known, then, how _young_ she was. Loathed himself for them, the things life had taken from her. She wasn’t even eighteen yet, and already she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders. He knew what heavy burden it was, and he knew that he did not love her for that, alone, but for a great many things. So he’d said, when she’d turned her head down like she’d done something he should hate, 

_Do you remember what I said to you, that first time I came to your room? You ask, I come._

_You’re easy like that_ , she had finished. _I’ll_ show _you how easy I am,_ he had thought, but shaken the whole thought away. She needed better than that, out of him; though he did not want her to have it. If Elena had asked, in that moment, to have Damon’s hands on her body, then that’s where they would have been. But she was a child who needed to sleep; wanted somebody to pull up the covers and cradle her close to their warmth. And so he had done it, despite all that was wrong in their world. He had given himself that one, perfect night with Elena. She had been that, even then. And he’d wondered, that night, as Elena’s breath had tattooed itself onto his arm and his favorite nightshirt, if he’d already done wrong by her. _It’s not that I don’t think you’re strong,_ he had told her, knowing that she was so deep in her dreams that she could not hear if she tried. _It’s just that I need you alright._ He had slipped out at two in the morning. Figured that, this time, it wouldn’t take very long. 

And he had already been there. 

“Damon,” He’d said. Elena was right about him, Damon’d thought. Elijah _did_ have a soft voice. An impeccable way about him. Was it horrible, he had wondered, that he wanted to see what would happen if he lost control? If Elena was young to him, then he was young to Elijah, and saw it plain in his eyes. 

“What are you doing here?” Damon had asked him. 

“You let her choose,” He had countered, pouring a fifth of his whiskey, another fifth of a blood bag. “If you were a smart man, you would have made her go home.” 

“She’s welcome here when she wants,” Damon had said, pretending to not be surprised when Elijah slides the drink his way. “I don’t need to feed,” He’d told him. 

“No,” Elijah had told him, “You don’t. But Elena is up in your bed.” 

“I wouldn’t -” 

“If she asked you to?” He had asked. “I know you are close. I am confident in Elena; I know that she would not ask you for anything that would hurt her. But she does not understand us enough to know better than asking for that.” 

“She wouldn’t,” He’d told him, letting his voice harden up. Other things were, he could not have lied, but he’d gotten better at those. 

“Good,” Elijah’d said. “See that it stays that way.” 

“You’re not the boss of me,” Damon had told him. 

“I’ve saved your life three times now,” The Original’d said. Damon had let the drink in. There wasn’t vervain in it, he’d thought. Not enough to affect him, at least. 

“You didn’t do it for me.” 

“Strangely enough,” Elijah had said, “The only person who’d save you for you is Elena. I must speak to her about that.” 

“You wouldn’t _dare,_ ” Damon’d said, but it had not been a threat, no more than Elijah’s had been. They’d reached some understanding, he’d thought - because, about that, they’d agreed. He would _not_ let Elena get hurt. Not by anybody, and certainly not by Elijah. He would do it, Damon had thought, because he’d known how he ticked. They were people who fought for the ones that they loved. And Elijah, he hadn’t loved her. Not the way Damon had. 

“Unfortunately for me,” He had told him, “I did make Elena a promise. Do try and make sure she fails me.” 

Damon had laughed and Elijah had laughed and Damon had stared at him, shocked. 

“What’s the matter?” Elijah had asked. 

“I just - didn’t know you could laugh,” Damon’d said. 

“Damon Salvatore,” He had told him, “If you knew everything that you didn’t, I am fairly certain you’d stake yourself here tomorrow.” 

“Really, though?” Damon’d asked him. “Since when have you _laughed,_ Elijah?” 

An absence pervades the room. 

“I haven’t laughed,” Elijah had said, “Since Katerina betrayed me. You are hardly the only man to fall to the spell of her charms. She was a very cruel woman, Damon - whatever you think of her, know that. In many ways, she was crueler by far than my brother.” 

“Because she wouldn’t die for you?” Damon’d asked. It was the principle of it, he’d told himself, and not any lingering feelings. 

“Because she would not stay,” He had told him, “For anybody who loved her.” 

Damon’s eyes had gone wide. 

“I have loved before,” He had said, “I am not so distant from you. Every day of my life I regret having loved Katerina. It does not mean it was wrong.” 

“Katherine?” Damon had asked. 

“Love,” He had told him. “There are worse things than loving, I’ve found.” 

“Like what?” Damon’d asked him. 

“Petrovas.” 

The absence returned. Through it, he’d heard her, tossing and turning. Thought of the sheets growing cold, and the press of her small, fragile body. She was so human, Elena. So good at taking in air. Did her blood call to him like the song of a siren? What would it even matter? She might not love Stefan, but he knew that she didn’t love him. If she did, she’d have kissed him by now. 

“Elena’s not a Petrova,” He’d said. 

“I know that she isn’t,” Elijah had told him. “You are very lucky to know a girl like Elena.” 

_Girl,_ he had called her, not woman. Elena would never be that, he had thought, as her breath came down through the floor. Soon the moon would be full. And everything that she should’ve had will be gone to him, just like her. A functionless, drained thing that had once been the girl that he loved, with her eyes like milk chocolate and her words like water on flame; and the fierce, gentle way she had danced with him, making him human again. What would he be without her, he had wondered, and would it even be worth it? He had thought more than he could admit of what it would be like to let his fangs catch his wrist and force it into her mouth; stain her teeth and her tongue red with it, tell her that she would _live._ She would hate him, he knows, for all of that living, but she would have it, at least. 

“I won’t do it,” He’d said, more to himself than Elijah. 

“I would hope not,” Elijah had told him. “Sire bonds do tend to complicate things.” 

“Sire bonds don’t exist,” He’d said, scoffing. 

“For dopplegangers they do.” Elijah had offered him, seemingly out of nothing. “That isn’t why you won’t do it, though, is it?” 

“No,” He had told him, somehow completely at ease. “Elena deserves to be human. I won’t make that choice for her, this time.” 

“Then you are worthy of her,” Elijah had told him. 

“Is that why you came?” Damon’d asked. 

Elijah had shaken his head. 

“Why did you come, then?” Damon had asked, and Elijah had shot back his drink. It was so unrestrained, so unlike him, that Damon had thought he should _run._ Or, he had thought, do any number of things. 

“I wanted to give you advice,” He had told him, “Regarding yourself and your brother. And - anyone else who applies.” 

“And what would that be?” Damon’d asked him. 

“Love is a hard thing to live with,” He’d said, “But it is harder when it is forbidden. There is much of the world that lies beyond you and your brother. If there is one thing it’s taught me that I would wish to pass on, it is this: Don’t think too much about it, who you love and who loves you back. These things win in the end.” 

“In the end,” Damon’d told him, “Elena is going to die.” 

“Hardly,” Elijah had said. “You said it yourself. Not out loud, but it counts all the same. I choose my family, Salvatore. Now just as I did then.” 

“Elena isn’t your family,” He’d told him. Said it harsh, like an ember at play. Elijah had cocked back his head. 

“Consider,” He’d told him, “Who Elena Gilbert’s family _is_. She has chosen us, Damon. Her brother, and you, and myself. She considers me part of her family, now. Who am I to refuse her?” 

“You’re the oldest living vampire,” Damon had said. “You can refuse whatever you want. But instead you live by your - your stupid fucking moral code, or whatever it is, and -” 

“Do you know?” Elijah had asked him, “What those morals entail? They are really quite simple. I’m sure that you’d understand them.” 

“ _Try me,_ ” Damon had snarled. 

“There are three,” Elijah had said, with a calm, pleasant smile affixed. “Firstly, a man must always keep promises Secondly, he must not tell lies.” 

“And thirdly?” Asks Damon. 

“A man must know who his family is, and never let himself hurt them. We have the same code, you and I. Haven’t you noticed that, Damon?” 

“I-” 

“You persist in thinking that we are so unalike. Tell me - you know Elena. Do you think that she’d love a man who had no moral compass.” 

“She doesn’t love me,” Damon had told him, _And I am not nearly a man._ The words were a constant, a knowing of his, that he’d carry with him to his grave. But Elijah had cocked his head further. 

“She isn’t sleeping in my room,” He’d said, “And she isn’t sleeping in hers. She is a sweet girl, Elena, and I know what she sees in you.” 

He had brushed his hands down his suit. _Why_ , Damon’d wondered, _Do all your clothes fit you so well?_ And why am I noticing _that?_

“I should be going,” He’d told him. “Thank you for letting me stay.” 

“I didn’t do it for you,” Damon’d said. “I didn’t do it for morals.” 

“You did it for her,” He had told him, giving him one last small smile. “Mark my word, Damon Salvatore. I’ll be remembering that.” 

With that, Elijah had gone. And Damon had stood by the fireplace, where he’d thrown that bourbon so hard that the crystal had broken; left it there a whole week for the sun to make rainbows atop; where Elena had slapped him and pushed him away and asked him, so shyly, to _stay._ She was growing too fitful, he’d thought, in her sleep, and soon she would know that he’d left. But when he had seen her, her hair pillowed out like a dark waterfall, he had thought for a moment that he should be a smart man, and not somebody in love. He had not wanted to know about all of the things that she dreamed. He had wanted to hold her and ward off her nightmares. But he'd wanted her, more, to be strong. 

“Damon?” She’d asked him. Her voice had been drowsy, tossed in the tempest of sleep. 

“Go back to sleep,” He had told her, sidling back up to her. She had snuggled herself into him, pressing as far as she could without melting into his body,and he’d tightened around her instinctively. 

“I don’t want to die,” She had told him - half, he had thought, still asleep. 

“We’re not going to let you,” He’d said. 

“But if I asked you to?” She had plead with him, in a fading lucidity. And Damon had made his choice, then and there, the same way that both of them’d known. _Are you happy now?_ He had thought, as the answer came to his mind. _Are you happy that you got me right?_ If Elijah could laugh, he had thought to himself, then Elijah could also be happy. But something had told him he wasn’t, more than the words he had spoken. There was something in him when he looked at Elena, Damon had noticed. Something that he recognized. It wasn’t safer for her, but it was every ounce as real. 

“If you asked me to,” He had told her, “I’d give you whatever you wanted.” 

She had pushed herself up to him, then, and Damon’d hastily dodged. 

“Elena,” He’d said, “You should sleep.” 

“‘M going to _die,_ ” She had told him. “I don’t _wanna_ sleep anymore.”

And Damon had heard Rose in her, felt the door in her mind. It was right there in front of him, he’d thought; what would it take, he had wondered, to make her dream something simple, and sweet, that would take all the pain out of her? 

“I’ll be here tomorrow,” He’d told her. 

“Will you kiss me tomorrow?” She’d asked him. 

“Of course I will,” Damon’d said. “Didn’t I tell you, Elena? Anything that you want.” 

But life, it was never that simple. Tomorrow would come, he had thought, as he lay in the circle of all her confusion - those feelings she could not acknowledge out loud, save through the veil of a fog - and she would not reach for his lips. _Stefan,_ she’d say, waking up. He laughs about that, while he’s choking the bile back down; while she wails like he’s stabbed her, like he’s put his _hands_ up to her. The name on her lips, it hadn’t belonged to his brother. But still, it had not been his own.


	6. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: As promised, an early update to make up for the shortness of the interlude. This chapter is purely focused on building and exploring Elena's past - both real and imposed - and the way that it impacts her relationships with the rest of the characters. We also see a bit of character building from everyone else, including Bonnie, who I would like to stress right now is _not_ meant to be a villain. Bonnie Bennett deserved better, in my opinion. I hope to give her that by the time that this story is done, even if it doesn't happen immediately. As always, I hope that you guys enjoy this chapter - it's a bit slower than the first few, but next update we're going to see a _lot_ of intimate character development, and after that, a twist which I'm _super_ excited for. So if you're interested in seeing all of that, keep reading. I promise that we're getting there!

Elena Gilbert was fifteen years old when the _iPod_ slipped from her hands. She’d been trying to grab it, to see what music he liked. Caroline’d said that she bet he listened to _Kidz Bop. Nobody listens to_ Kidz Bop, she’d said, and then it had fallen. She’d told him she’d fix it. Told him she’d get it replaced. But in its glass screen, Jeremy had seen her. _What have I done?_ Thinks Elena, as she meets his blue eyes gone shattered. _I’ll fix it,_ he’s told her. _I’ll make it up to you, ‘Lena._ She doesn’t know what he was talking about, and then, like a page turned, she does. That gentle night wakes up in her; the way she had squirmed while Damon’d been gone, the things she had wished he would do. In her dreams, he had been at her river delta, bent to the join of her thighs. His fingers had worked her, kneading fierce inside of her folds, but she had wanted his kiss. Kiss me, Elena’d begged. _Anywhere, Damon, but there._ And she had wanted it truly. She thinks he had wanted it, too. Still, he’d avoided her clumsy attempt at the kissing. Had said, without saying, that she wasn’t ready for that. _Then why do I still remember you?_ Thinks Elena, _Feeling you pushing me down?_ Because those things, too, have been real to her. The way he had split her in two. Thinking has done it again. 

“Elena,” She hears, “Sweet Elena.” 

“Stop,” She says, “Make it _stop._ I’ll give you whatever you _want._ ” 

“Shh,” Says Elijah, “Just breathe.” 

He has no part of his body on her, but he stands so that she can feel him, the nearness of him when she’s ready to give up her space. She does not know exactly where Damon has gone, but she hears someone distantly retching. Bonnie’s squeezed her eyes shut. She feels the graze of fangs against her, but this time they are licking and laving. Complimented, Elena thinks, by hands that are rougher than his. 

“What were we, Elijah?” She asks him. Quiet, so they cannot hear. 

“We were everything to each other,” He says. Quiet, so they cannot hear. He had not wanted to tell her, she thinks - _From what I know,_ he had said. Not ‘not likely’, but ‘impossible’. And Elena thinks he was right. Damon would not have hurt her. Not like she thinks that he has. 

“Can we be that again?” Asks Elena, “I - don’t mean just you and I.” 

“If you’d like,” Says Elijah. The distant wretching is gone. And time has stopped stopping, she thinks. 

“You’ll have to turn me,” She says. 

“Absolutely not.” 

“Bonnie -” 

“I won’t let you _be_ one of them.” 

“And what if I want to?” She asks. 

“Trust me, Elena. You don’t.” Damon is leaning there in the doorway. He’s wiping his mouth on his shirt sleeve, and he will not look at her face. 

“What if there’s no other way?” Asks Elena. 

“Then you’ll just have to die,” Bonnie says. “Make new memories here.” 

“I don’t want them,” She tells her. It sounds like a bitter old widow. 

“I know that you don’t want _yours,_ ” Bonnie tells her, “Unless you _want_ to know about -” 

“Don’t,” Says Elijah. His voice is so low and so fatal it almost gives her a glimpse. “You will _not_ speak that way to Elena. You would do well to remember, Ms. Bennett, what happened the last time you did so.” 

“What happened the last time she did so?” Asks Bonnie. 

“She gave up her life to save yours. You owe Elena a life debt.” 

“We don’t believe in those, _vampire._ ” 

“I do,” Elena says, then. It surprises her that she says it. She hasn’t thought about life debts before. But she’s known, for so long, that she owes them. She owes them to everyone she left behind, even if it was to save them. 

“I don’t owe you a thing,” Bonnie tells her, “Not after all that you’ve done.”

“You don’t have to,” She says, “But think about if it were you.” 

“If it were me,” Says Bonnie, “Klaus would already be dead.” 

_Klaus,_ Elena thinks, _Klaus._ The beat of her heart is a whirlwind, taking her back to September. Autumn, she thinks, at the lake house. She had thought that the knife wouldn’t hurt, but she hadn’t thought it would be that bad. She had _never_ been hurt like that. Not by the bridge, or the ice. And it had not been the knife that had done it - it had been the look in his eyes, the desperation of him as he begged her to let him give blood. _Let me heal you!_ Elijah had screamed. _I’m dying,_ she’d thought, as she stared into him. She hadn’t wanted to take him with her. She hadn’t known what else to do. The pain had been ripping through her just like Damon, and the agony of it was nothing. _Klaus,_ Elena thinks, _Klaus._ She almost knows who he is. Has just enough forethought to hit the floor _before_ he gets Bonnie’s throat. _Whose bed will I wake up in this time?_ She wonders. It will be Elijah’s or Damon’s, but never, she knows, her own. There is not enough of her left, anymore, to be able to call that room hers. She does not know why he thought that there could be. And what will she dream about this time? Corpses in lakes, or the breath of the wind on her back? The storm is a gale around her. Elijah, she thinks, isn’t there. She hears it crash in through the radio speakers. Here, on this one gentle night. 

“You remember,” He tells her. 

“I do.” 

“Elena -” 

“I don’t want to fight you,” She says, “But I don’t want to think of it, either. No one could hate you that much. Where is Stefan, anyways?” 

“I don’t know,” Damon tells her, “We’ve lost contact lately, I think.” 

“He’s your _brother._ Wouldn’t you know?”

She is nestled into his side, and the bruises are starting to creep, but she cannot pull away. Her nightshirt is thin, and Damon, he still feels like Damon. She remembers thinking of that, the very first time that they met. That even if she did love Stefan, he could never have felt like this does. She wants to get closer to him, but it hurts her to move when so much of her body is broken. And he catches at her, just like Elijah had caught. Rolls her sleeves up, his eyes going dark. 

“This is what I remember,” She tells him, twisting her head back around. “I felt every second of it. You hated me, Damon. Don’t tell me I can’t be afraid.” 

“Elena,” He tells her, “I _loved_ you.” 

“And I loved Elijah,” She tells him, “What does that say about me?” 

Damon ignores her. Traces the bruise over once, twice, three times, and wipes it away into olive. 

“I wouldn’t,” He tells her. His head is bent down like he’s aching to kiss every mark. “ _Gods,_ Elena, how could you think I would _do_ this?” 

“How do I know,” Asks Elena, “That what you have done isn’t worse?” 

“Fucking -”

“I don’t even think love is real,” Says Elena. “I haven’t thought that for years. And I show up here, in this miserable hellhole, and suddenly everyone _loves_ me. How can I _live_ with myself?” 

“Love someone back,” Damon says. “I mean it, Elena. Love whoever you want to.”

“Even if it isn’t you?” 

He throws his head back and _howls._ Howls like Klaus would, she thinks. 

“I see you again, for the first time in years, looking like you’ve _killed_ someone, and you think I care who you love? I care if you’re doing alright, not who you want to have sex with.” 

“You were rough with me,” Says Elena. 

“I thought things,” He says, “That weren’t true.” 

“You forgave me,” She tells him. Thinks about that, and the hell that it must have been. 

“I didn’t need to,” He says. 

“Damon -”

“Not for the reasons you think. I’m the one who needs to be sorry. Elena, I - I _destroyed_ you.” 

“You said that you didn’t,” She says. Still here, she thinks, in his arms. 

“But you thought I did,” Damon tells her. “You lived, every day of your life, thinking I - What did I _do_ to you?” 

“It doesn’t matter,” She tells him. 

“Elena -”

“Tell him that it doesn’t matter.” 

“It doesn’t,” Elijah says. 

“Thank you.” 

The shape in the window unfolds, and Elijah is holding his hand out. “It’s your last day,” He says, “As a human. Weren’t you the one who said that it shouldn’t be wasted?” 

He is right. The sun’s peaking over the mountains, although they do not have those, here. His fingers look gold in the sunlight, but she will not do it alone. 

“You heard him,” She tells him, “Come on.” 

“No.” 

“Damon,” She says, “We’re burning daylight out here.” 

“I lost my ring,” Damon tells her. 

“I’m dreaming,” She says, “You don’t need it.” 

And so he steps, ringless, into the sun. Without that slim piece of lapis he does not look like himself. His hair is long, and curled at front, just like when he was a boy. Elena finds that she likes it much better that way. He looks so _afraid,_ thinks Elena, of all of the things she could do. All of the things that she, most likely, has done. But he looks more afraid of the things that he thinks he might’ve; the scars which are left on her not-quite-a-paleness, deep where his hands have not touched. She thinks about letting him do it. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And the way could be just like this: Seeing him here, in the light of her dreaming, her fingers itching to pull down his lips onto hers while Elijah quizzically watches. He _does_ have the prettiest lashes, she thinks. The bluest, most beautiful eyes. 

“Elena,” She hears, “We should go.” 

“I don’t want to,” She finds herself saying. “Please don’t let me wake up.” 

“Why?” Damon asks her. 

“If I wake up, then it’s real.” 

And she thinks, as she says it, that Damon regrets every word. 

“It might be,” Elijah tells her, “But this will also be real. If you want it to be, then it will.” 

_I don’t know what I want,_ thinks Elena, _But I think that I know what I need._ And the memory rushes in like a swift stream; a different gentle night. Her eyes are burning with tears. _We were everything to each other,_ he’d told her. _You were everything, once, to us._ She can see it, now, in the dead place inside of her mind. She used to know the things that made them separate from each other, and the things that made them alike. She’d memorized the way that they felt together. 

“It doesn’t scare me,” She tells them, “Whatever it was that we were. 

_Will be_ , Elena amends. Someday, but not today. Her last day being a human. She wonders which set of fangs will be nipping her skin. Which wrist will be held to her teeth. Whose blood will drip down her throat like crushing a tangerine; who will stroke her, and soothe her, so that the moment she snaps and her body goes lax in their arms will feel like nothing at all. Who will give her sweet nothings and cry over her, though they’ll already know she’s not dead. But she is not scared of it. Whoever they are, they will have the arms of the other. The assurances of the other. The telling of them that they have done well, that she will come back and not blame them, ever, for any of what they have done. And she wonders who will be hovering over her, not ready to break her, but coax her back into not-life, when her eyes once again fllutter open. Who will slit the blood bag with beautific efficiency, urging her on as her memories flood her to take one sip, and one more. Will she fall, she wonders, or falter? And how will the blood _taste_ to her. There is a way, she’s beginning to think, that both of them look at her. The blood, thinks Elena, will taste like that look in a bottle. She will roll up a message inside it, toss it out into the sea. 

“We should talk about this,” Elijah finally says. “This choice that you make for yourself.” 

“I don’t,” Says Elena. Knowing she doesn’t, and reveling in its warmth. Damon’s by her in a flash, his eyes burning coins in the morning. 

“You need to,” He tells her, too firmly. “Elena, this is your _life_ that we’re talking about.” 

_My life to live_ , thinks Elena, _And my life to lose, if I can._

“Why don’t you want me to do it?” She asks, spinning herself to not face him. He’s right behind her, so close that she feels his aggression, his worry, pent up. “Will I remember something I won’t like?” 

“ _No,_ ” He says, vehemently, “I just - You don’t know what happened back then,” He tells her, “You would never have wanted to do this.” 

“Yeah,” She says, “But times change. And - if it saves you all -”

“It will,” Says Elijah. 

“Then really, I don’t have a choice.” 

“You always have a choice, sweet Elena,” He tells her, looping them up in one shape. “I sincerely regret that you felt as if you did not, once.” 

“Once?” Asks Elena, “I’ve felt that way always, Elijah. At least now there’s a reason for it.” 

“Then this is the last day?” He asks her. She melts her way back into Damon; lets herself mold to him. His arms come around her. She sees where the ring’s left a groove. 

“This is the last day,” She tells him. There is sobbing behind her, the same kind of retch as before, and it stills. 

“Fuck this,” Says Damon, “You can’t just let yourself _die._ ” 

“I -” 

“Not for something like this.” 

“What, then?” She asks him. “Why should I, if not for something like this?” 

“For yourself,” Damon tells her, breath hitching. “For wanting, and needing, and _love._ ” And Elena thinks, _There are so many different kinds._ The love of these men, she does not know if she’d die for. She has no remembrance of it, not the way that she thinks she must. But there are other kinds, too. The love of her parents, hiding the worst of it from her. The love of her brother, and Jenna, and Alaric, who were there when life got too tough. The love of the ones who had fought for her, when she was lost in the dark. It is that kind of love, thinks Elena, that can’t be lost to the darkness. It rests on her shoulders, now. 

“What do you think that I’m doing it for?” Asks Elena. She knows that his brows draw together, and get that furrow he always has, completely lost or sincere. _Not like that,_ she thinks, towards Elijah’s tight lips. She thinks that he already knows. But she will not say it out loud, not when these two men are here, and they’re pouring their comfort on her. Though she has showered, she had not felt clean until now. With one set of arms pulling back and the other set pulling forwards. With two men’s cold warmth around her. _I was right about you_ , thinks Elena, as her fingers come up to tug on a lock of his hair. _You aren’t a man, Elijah. How could you be a man?_ She knows, in the back of her mind, that Elijah must feed when he’s hungry, but she cannot see him do it. His fangs might as well be a falsehood. For a moment she wishes he would. There’s an open spot on her neck that she’d love to have one of them mar, and a windy ripple comes on it. Elijah’s eyes sharpen, and Damon’s hands tighten around her. She does not know who moves first. 

But this is what starts it: he brings down his head and Damon is pushing her so she can meet it, and the place where their lips touch throbs with all that he feels. Elena gets nothing back, but kissing him brings something _new._ Everything that he loves about her, tying her up like white ribbon. It is gentle, she thinks, not fierce, so she pulls him down further and tries. Lips clash with tongues clash with teeth. There are ticklish ghosts running circles on her while they do it, and she pushes back into their web. Hears an unnecessary sharp inhale. 

“Don’t forget me,” She says, “When I’m gone.” 

“We’ll be right here with you, sweet Elena.” 

She likes to see him this way; his perfect composure is ruined by the swollen-ness of his lips, and she finds herself licking her own. Her fingers stray up to that place on her neck, pressing at it, reaching back. She finds Damon’s hand by mistake, but it is a happy mistake, and she guides it right where she wants. 

“Elena,” He tells her. 

“I trust you,” She says, “Go ahead.” 

“You _can’t,_ ” Damon tells her, “ _Elena -_ ” 

“Maybe I don’t,” Says Elena, “But it’s my last day as a human. I want to know what it really feels like.” 

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” Elijah says. He’s covering up both of them. 

“Maybe I don’t,” Says Elena, “But I know what I’m doing it for.” 

There is a glance between them, exchanged. She cannot imagine everything that it says, but she feels they are making a choice of their own when they give it, and she stretches to languish, there in the nest that it makes. She is no longer sure she can stand on her two legs alone. It is the last day, and she wants nothing else out of it, but to stand right here, in this room that belongs to somebody; somebody, anybody, whose name had not been Elena. _Did you always sleep here?_ She wonders, _Or did the door come out of nowhere, sometime when you were twenty?_ He is older than her by a few hundred years, and she’ll never forget how his harshness had not felt on her, but Elena _knows_ that she trusts him. _There’s no one else for me,_ she thinks, feeling their skin, on her neck, meld with hers, _No one, except for you._

“Damon,” She tells him, “Please bite me.” 

The absence of them is a momentary deserved-ness, she thinks. It takes her back to that long, lonely time when she thought that she knew who she was, and the weight of it hits her heavy, collapsing her into Elijah. 

“Shh,” He says, “Sweet Elena. You are so very brave.” 

But Elena does not _feel_ brave. She feels as if something is lacking, some fundamental bolt that’s keeping together the complex enigma she is. Do vampires learn about humans, she wonders, the way that they learn about them? Do they have their own myths of her kind - live their lives thinking that humans can only tell lies, and cannot abide coriander? She laughs a warm, rushing laugh, and it swirls and eddies there; with the push and the pull and the holding of her, the caught-up-ness of her in them. She feels dam and hot on the cold, open spot, the _faintest_ nip of his teeth. He is getting her weak for it, she knows, and is intensely grateful for soemthing to stop her from falling - though there would be worse things, she thinks, when she feels his lips on hers again. He is kissing the fear out of her. Elena wishes he wouldn’t. Not because she hates the kissing, but because she isn’t _afraid._ It is the good kind of fear, thinks Elena, the one that is falling from airplanes, running fast in the rain. 

“Do you still think that you loved me?” He asks her, speaking it onto her lips. 

“Not on my own,” Says Elena, “Not only.” 

It is the briefest moment of _hell._ It hurts, she thinks, with the blinding whiteness of fire, but then Damon takes his first pull, and every bad thing ceases. Her blood is a river of life within her, and the koi fish swimming in it. They come to the surface with old eyes and long, glittering tails as he drags it like nicotine. Oh, Elena thinks - exhales it, even, so thin and so squeaky that she feels a chuckle against her, and the drag becomes more insistent, less yielding, and she feels herself up there, suspended. No harm can come to me now, thinks Elena, as Damon keeps drinking and drinking. A thin trail of gold leaks out from the corners of him, and the safety of it, like a fresh-dampened washcloth, wipes off the rest of the bruises, leaving a new skin behind. It is a dream, thinks Elena, and nothing about it is real, but still she is growing lightheaded. And the lips that are on hers adjourn, to be replaced with the sound of soft ripping, a secondary insistence. She finds herself squirming from it, afraid of what it might do. She hadn’t thought it would happen like this. 

“Drink,” Says Elijah, “Let go.” 

There is ancient power in this, thinks Elena. Power that words can’t define. His blood flows through her and her blood flows through Damon; soon, they are both in his veins. He pulls away with a shudder, and her knees buckle under her hips. Elijah pushes her backwards, and they slide to the floor in a heap of crimson and honey. She settles into his chest. The wound is already gone. 

“Okay?” Damon asks her. She nods. “You did so well,” Damon tells her, “I’m sorry, if I -” 

“Don’t,” Says Elena, “You didn’t.” 

Elijah has gone to the window, thrown it open so that the blurry light bathes them. All the cold that is left in her fades into nothing, or less. 

“Elijah?” She asks him. 

“I believe,” Says Elijah, “That we are still, as you said, burning daylight.” 

“Where are you going to take me?” She asks him. 

“Wherever you feel you should go.” 

And Elena thinks about that. There are so many places she should. But she finds herself needing to mourn, and the tears slip down her like all of the others have done. This time, they let them fall. _There is healing in crying,_ Elena remembers. Her father had told her that, maybe, once. _Everyone needs it sometimes._ Elena feels _strong_ from the blood. 

“The graveyard,” She tells him, “Take me - next to the crow.” 

It’s the nature of her, she thinks, not to make sense, and the nature of dreaming to move. Reminding her, through all of it, that they are still in her mind. 

“Where’s Damon?” She asks, when her eyes clear of fog and the spring of it comes into her. 

“Fighting,” He says, “With Ms. Bennett. She is -” 

“Bonnie,” She says, with a mirthful bit of a laugh. She’s starting to feel it, the fact that she has been drained. But it could be all of their gravestones, glittering up at her, giving her all the old reasons she used to hate herself for. _I’m dying for you,_ Elena thinks. _No more dying for me._ It’s the only thing she has to give them, and she’s giving it to them too late. The feel of her journal and pen in her hands are two phantom, flickering limbs. But Elijah has followed all her directions explicitly. Even the crow is right there. 

“My parents,” She says, at his lilting, questioning gaze. “I wasn’t wrong about them.” 

“No,” Says Elijah, “You weren’t. That - we would not have given you false hope. It was something which we agreed on.” 

“Was it like I remember?” She asks him, “Or -” 

“There were no vampires involved.” 

“This is my happy place,” She says, when his trailing off gives them a pause. “God, that sounds stupid, I know. It’s just - when they died, I would come out here all the time. I would write, and I’d read it out loud to them. I thought that if I was clsoe to them, they would hear about how things were. I did it for months; I kept thinking that they’d answer me, but all that I got was the crow.” 

“They are a fiercely intelligent species,” He tells her, as the crow gives a pleased, raising ‘ _cah._ ’ “They have a trick, opening nuts.” 

“Yeah?” Asks Elena. 

“They push fallen nuts right behind car tire tracks,” Says Elijah. “When the cars back up, the nuts crack.” 

_Just like you did,_ she thinks, as she kneels down to look at the graves. But the words are all muddled, and she does not see their names on them. _Tatia Mikaelson,_ the gravestones mock loudly. _Katherine Salvatore._ The dates are shifting things, glitching their way in and out. When she closes her eyes, she can see the names coming through. _Miranda Gilbert,_ the name on her mother’s stone says. Nobody called her Miranda. She was always a Mira to them. And her father’s name, she thinks, _Grayson._ A son of the Founders, he’d been, just like her brother is now. Jeremy, too, has a ring. Elijah slips down next to her, and she knows he is tracing his own names. Feeling his own way around. 

“Blood sharing,” He says, “It’s extremely personal.” 

“Are you offended?” She asks him. 

“Not in the slightest,” He tells her, “But when I said that you didn’t know what you asked for, I was referring to that. When vampires share blood, it means something to them, Elena.” 

“It felt like it did,” She admits. The warmth in her heart has not faded, yet, all the way. A blush comes into her cheeks when she thinks about sharing her blood in real life, seeing it fill Damon up and make him that much more alive. _I could repay you,_ she thinks to herself. 

“It isn’t like that,” He tells her, “True blood sharing, Elena - it has nothing to do with repayment. It is solely based on one’s trust.” 

“Will he hate me?” She asks, “If I think I can’t trust him tomorrow?” 

Elijah roughs out a sigh. 

“I thought,” He says, “Once, that I knew Damon Salvatore well. His capacity to love you frankly astounds me, Elena. In all honestly, it rather frightens me, sometimes.” 

“You,” Elena asks, “Frightened?” 

“Love is a frightening thing,” Says Elijah, “When you give it all of yourself.” 

“Is that what it is?” Asks Elena. 

“In his mind,” He tells her, “It should be.” 

Elena casts back, and she hears it; the still of him in her bedroom, making that midnight confession, his eyes so tortured and full. 

“He -” 

“You needed to know for yourself,” Says Elijah. “Don’t worry yourself over Damon. He can take care of himself. And he most certainly will not hate you tomorrow. Things will be harder, tomorrow, Elena, than your short life’s ever known.” 

“My parents are dead,” Says Elena. “How could tomorrow be worse?” 

“Today is the last day,” He says. _How hard can it be,_ thinks Elena, and Elijah purses his lips. “You know the process?” He asks her. 

“I have to drink,” Says Elena, “And then someone has to kill me.” 

“It will happen,” He says, “You will let it be done. Then the real work begins. You have no idea what it feels like, Elena, the world when you see it through blood.” 

“I’ll still be human,” She tells him, “Inside. I wouldn’t shut off my emotions.” 

“You don’t know what you’d do,” Says Elijah. “That is rather the point. It is hopeless to change you, Elena, and I wouldn’t try for the world, but you need to accept the severity of your actions, or else you will not be prepared.” 

“That’s what you wanted to take me here for? To lecture me like a child?” 

“No,” Says Elijah, “I - It has been a very long time, sweet Elena, since I felt for someone so deeply. While you were gone, I relearned what transitioning felt like. It is a torment we wouldn’t wish on you.” 

“Elijah,” She says, “I appreciate that, but I can’t just let you all die because it might make me suffer. I know how suffering feels.” 

“Elena,” He says, “You don’t know what suffering _is,_ not ’til you feel things like we do. Every grief that you’ve banished will drown and consume you, until you’re convinced that the only thing that will ever undo it is the taste of fresh, human blood. It will make you do things that you won’t forgive yourself for.” 

“Not if I have you to help me.” 

“Even then,” Says Elijah, “The thoughts will come into your head. I do not think you’re a child, Elena, but I need you to understand.” 

“What is there to understand?” Asks Elena, “Whatever the price is, I’ll pay it for you. For everyone that I love.” 

“You do not love me,” He tells her. 

“Elijah,” She says, but he cuts off her fleeting protest. 

“You did once,” He tells her, “And someday, Elena, I hope that you’ll love me again. But your love is your strength, and you need it with you, today. Neither myself nor Damon would ask you to give it up now.” 

_If my love is my strength,_ thinks Elena, _Then why has it led to such dying?_

“Is it true,” She asks him, “That I didn’t want this before?” 

“It is very true,” Says Elijah. “You were almost turned, once, and it nearly broke you to pieces.” 

“Is that why you said that I’m brave?” 

“I said that,” He tells her, “Because I believe that it’s true. There are very few people that I know who’d willingly choose to die.” 

“Not even Damon?” She asks him. 

“Not even he,” Says Elijah, holding something inside him. “For you, though,” He tells her, “He would. You must understand that, Elena. We do not take your life lightly. Not when you so want to live it.” 

“Nobody knows what I want,” Says Elena. “I just want the dying to stop. That’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted.” 

“Not us?” Asks Elijah, a worriedness coming to him. “Do you mean to tell me that you feel nothing for us? No desire for us to be near?” 

“Not the kind I would die for,” She says, and Elijah stands up abruptly. “I didn’t -” 

“You are a human,” He tells her, “I hardly expect you to know how all of this works. But do not fall into that pattern, Elena, of hurting because you are hurt. It does not look good on you.” 

_It shouldn’t hurt you,_ she thinks. She did not say it because it is true; she said said it because it was festering in her, rotting in her like a wound. It pulled and spawned maggots whenever she’d tried to walk. Tomorrow, she thinks, a switch will be inside of her, and she will have another, worse choice. But she needs him to understand, too, what type of person she is. And she knows he will hear when she thinks it, so she lets her mind’s eyes scream it blind. _I am a sinner. I am worth nothing at all. If the most I can give is my life up for yours, then I’ll give it. I can’t want what I haven’t earned._

“You are fortunate,” Says Elijah, “That I’m not the one who has left.” 

“He wouldn’t hurt me,” She says. 

“But you would hurt him,” Says Elijah, “And I feel very strongly about both of you, sweet Elena, though there are places where I could be killed for saying something like that. Causing him pain will just cause you pain. You need no more pain in your life.” 

“I deserve it, Elijah,” She tells him. Feels the air crushed from her lungs and the dull, throbbing red of the punctures. “Those places,” She asks him, “Where are they?” 

“I -” 

“They’re not here,” Says Elena, pushing herself up to meet him. Letting Tatia, whoever she was to him, burn. “I know that you think I don’t understand it, but I know it better than you. I won’t die for you, ‘Lijah, I’ll _live._ And it might be your kind of living, but can’t we just let it count?” 

“If you insist,” Says Elijah. She breathes in the feel of the noontime. Thinks of not having to breathe. Everything’s bright here, but somehow, it will be brighter. 

“What is it like?” Asks Elena, “Being of your kind?” 

“Do you really want me to tell you?” 

“Yes.” Says Elena, with no hesitation, reluctance. 

“Very well,” Says Elijah, “Being of my kind, Elena. It is a trying ordeal, full of much pain and regret. Vampires feel things deeply, irrevocably, as part of their very souls. Our emotions tangle and tussle and go to war with each other. We spend our whole lives coming to terms with the monsters that turning has made us, and the fact that our lives are dependent on hastening death. On the outside, our bodies heal quickly, but on the inside things are far different. Pain metastizes in us, spreads outwards until we are hovering just on madness’s brink. Having no rope to hold onto, we find that the only thing left is to close our eyes, say goodbye, jump.” 

“Or turn off the lights,” Says Elena, half to herself, half to him. 

“Or turn off the lights,” He agrees, “And live a life without joy, and comfort, and love. Being of our kind means learning to kill what we were, and dig our own graves for them. We are fast, but we do not know how to run. We just know how to keep our heads above water.” 

“My parents couldn’t,” She tells him, “It was horrible, ‘Lijah, they -” 

“You don’t have to tell me,” He says, and she hears: _You already have. I know what burden you carry, Elena. I wish I could take it from you_. But taking her pain, she thinks, isn’t his job. He will already give her so much. If she asked it of him, she thinks that he might even save her. Tell her that there is some other way, and that they can wait ’til they find it. Devote every spare, waking moment to making sure the others are safe. 

“I will not do it in vain,” Says Elena. “I am _not_ Isobel.” 

“I would never have thought that you were.” 

Elena looks back at the graves. It is a cycle, this dying, she thinks. And death is a strange place, in and of itself. It is a place that they have both gone, a silence that they will not speak of. She wonders if they remember it, going there. She thinks that they went to heaven; is sure that she’ll go to hell. _Tatia Petrova,_ the gravestone reads now. _Katerina Petrova. Jenna Sommers. Jeremy Gilbert. Alaric Saltzman. Niklaus Mikaelson. Caroline Forbes._ The names blow away like chalk on the ground and one name - one name - is left. _Elena,_ it says. Just Elena. _Learning to kill what we were,_ she thinks, _And digging our own graves for them._ That is what they’re doing here. Elijah presses the shovel into her fist and he gives her one last, final chance. 

“Elena,” He tells her, “May I speak freely with you? Even if you must forget it?” 

“One loss,” She tells him, “For all of those memories back. How could I ever refuse?” 

“When one lives,” Says Elijah, on a sharp, steadying breath, “For one thousand years, they give up on hoping for this. I give you my word, I shall not.” 

“Then help me,” She tells him. There is so much digging to do. The wildflowers are growing up tall, and the crow is staring in slick black feathers, its beak turned up like a scalpel. The shovel is heavy, but as they dig, its load lightens, and the dirt by the grave is a city all of her own. She sees Jenna’s house in it, needing a new coat of paint, and the desolate old Lockwood cellar, all rusted chains and dank doorways. She sees a stone falling into the well. Counts the seconds it takes for the bottom to hit, and hears her mother’s calm voice in the splash that it makes. _Be beautiful for me,_ she’d told her. _Be everything that you are._

_Mother,_ she thinks, as the sun sinks low and the shovel is mist in her hands, _I’ll be so much more than that._

“I think they’re done fighting,” He says, as she wipes the sweat off her brows. 

“Then wake me up,” Says Elena. They stand at the edge of the grave they have dug. They stand at the crest of the well. Curved stone and lost longings have woven themselves into it. And the water, Elena remembers, had been chock-full of vervain. It had burned Stefan’s face where it hit. She is human today, though. This one, last day, she is human. The stone is fleeting behind her. Elijah’s blood sprints through her bones. He is made up of so much, she thinks. “I will again, someday,” She tells him. And counts the seconds it takes her to fall. One second, thinking she loved Stefan once. Two seconds, locking her in. Three seconds, Tyler. Klaus, and the sun, and the moon. Four seconds, Miss Mystic Falls. The almost touching but not quite. Five seconds, thinking he’d kissed her. Six and he’s holding her necklace, telling her of his love. Eight, and the feel of him drinking, as sweet and as rich as red wine. _You’re doing so well,_ Damon tells her, between every pull of his fangs. _Just a little bit longer now, ‘Lena._ There is a perfect symmetry to it. The car backs up, the nut cracks open, and Elena is still on the floor. 

“Now that you’ve decided to join us again,” Damon tells her, “Bonnie has something that she’d like to tell you. _Don’t you._ ” 

Bonnie ignores him, shoving him to the side. She holds out her hand, and Elena grasps up for it. There is no blood in her, none of Elijah’s, but she could still swear that she feels it. 

“Remember this,” Bonnie tells her, “Because this is the last time it’s ever going to happen.” 

“I’ll remember,” She tells her, and thinks, as she pulls herself back up to standing, broken and re-assembled; beaten, assaulted, _alive,_ that that is the magic of turning. Apart from the drinking and draining and digging of graves, there is something else to it that cannot be taken from her. The sun may blister and burn her. The bloodlust may haunt and pervade. But none of that, really, will matter. Elijah will be there, and Damon will be there; and she will be everything, all. She looks at Bonnie, and Bonnie looks back at her. Bonnie, like everyone, breathes. 

“I’ll remember,” She says.

And she will.


	7. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author's Note: A lot of character interaction and relationship development happens in this chapter. I played around with multiple moods while writing this, hoping to strike on just the way that I think everybody would act in this scenario - I don't know if I got everything right, but I tried. Hopefully it doesn't disappoint. The next chapter will see things changing drastically for Elena and all the rest - so consider this chapter a breather before the big plot twist, if you'd like. The next chapter should hopefully be out sometime next week. Until then, please enjoy this and let me know what you think - because, as always, feedback helps me to write this story, and other stories, better!**

She read about this in the Bible, but it doesn’t play out that way. There was the gathering of disciples, the giving of bread and of blood. Yes, she thinks, those things were true. But there were no vampires there, amongst those not-brother brothers. And none of them, she thinks - though some things have come into question - were ever in love with each other. Bonnie, she thinks, is their Judas. And she is their Christ, if she’ll use that analogy. She thinks she needs one that’s better, though, because nobody’s proud of her, here. Nobody wants her to do this. Even Damon, she thinks, from his brow-furrowed place at the opposite end of the table, doesn’t want her to turn. She hunts through their conversations, savoring how muddled they are. By this time tomorrow, she’ll be able to catch every word. The creak of the Boarding House floors, too, because that’s where they’re going to take her. Elena will make sure of that. She won’t stay here one day as the thing that she hid from aunt Jenna.

“We doing alright?” Asks Elijah, when the talking picks up and gets thick. It is easy for him to slip under, but Damon’s head minutely perks.

“Fine,” Says Elena, “Just - thinking,” She says, “About life.”

“What about it, Elena?” He asks her.

“I don’t think I’ll miss it that much.”

Her answer must satisfy him, because he turns back to Alaric to interrupt his interpretation of a grimoire. This one, she gathers, was the property of a Scottish witch who was trying to summon the ‘old gods’.

“Which ones?” Asks Elena. A little too lacking, but not enough to raise worry.

“Norse,” Says Elijah, “The gods that my family worshipped. They are familiar to you?”

“Everyone’s seen _Thor,_ Elijah.”

She hears Damon snort on his wine.

“ _Thor,_ ” Says Elijah, “Has ruined your appreciation of fine historical culture.”

“Write a book about it,” She suggests, poking fun, and she knows that he knows it. “All I’m saying is that I think you’d be good at writing.”

“I am a _wonderful_ writer,” He tells her, and she is shocked to hear:

“Weirdly enough, I’m going to have to agree.”

“Excuse me?” She asks, and Damon’s eyes widen too.

“I read Elijah’s first book,” Alaric says, “It was on the required reading list in my Historical Folklore course freshman year. It’s a fascinating discussion.”

“And how, pray tell, did you know who the author was?”

“Elijah Smith,” Says Alaric. “I haven’t met that many Elijah Smith’s who are interested in folktales. And then you showed up, and a lot of your theories sounded… suspiciously plausible.”

“So what were they?” She asks, “Propaganda?”

Three sets of eyes fix on her.

“It would make sense,” Says Elena, “A vampire, writing about the ‘real’ basis of mythical creatures and legends to convince people that vampires didn’t exist. Kind of like self-preservation?”

“You are far too smart for your own good,” He tells her. “But as a matter of fact, I wrote the books because there _are_ legends that don’t have supernatural origins. They are just as interesting, at least in my opinion, as those which are based in my world.”

“Our world,” Elena reminds him. “Cohabitation, remember?”

“Hell of a cohabitation,” Jeremy says.

“You live with a witch,” She shoots back, “Who can _literally_ control the elements and do amnesiac spells.”

“She wouldn’t kill anyone,” He responds, and Elena says,

“Yeah. Nobody except Damon.”

“I wouldn’t kill Damon, Elena.”

Bonnie sounds tired, she thinks, and for the first time realizes how hard this must be on her. To have said goodbye to her dearest and oldest of friends, not knowing how long it would take. And then, years later, to learn the only surefire way to restore her was turning her into the loathed. She doesn’t quite know _why_ she loathes them, but there was a time when she’d trusted Bonnie with everything. They’ll never have that, anymore.

“Correction,” She says, “You’d just lock him up in your dungeon.”

“How do you know,” Asks Elijah, barely audible, “That he wouldn’t like that, Elena?”

And, again, Damon chokes.

“Really, though,” Asks Elena, “What was your first book about? Other than folklore, that is.”

“Specifically,” Says Elijah, “It was about the symbology of the Ancient Egyptian pantheon in relation to modern religious storytelling. My brother, Kol, spent a great deal of time there, when he was -”

“Young?” Asks Elena.

“Not by your standards, no.”

“But by yours?” She asks him.

“Medium,” Says Elijah. She cannot help it, she _laughs._

“That _cannot_ be how you measure.”

“We use the Richter scale,” Damon tells her, “The half-life of a vampire is -”

“Every time I let you touch me,” She whispers, just as low as Elijah. The choking thing _works_ for her.

“Three hundred seventy years.”

“So how long do you have left then?” She asks him. _“Elijah._ I’m no good at math.”

“As long as I’m living,” He tells her. “There isn’t a secret to it.”

“Can I read it?” She asks him, “Your book?”

“You would not want to,” He says.

“Are you kidding me?” Asks Alaric. “I know we haven’t always gotten along, but speaking strictly as a fan, I think that your work is brilliant.” He looks past Elijah and tells her, “I’ll lend you my copy, sometime.”

“Eugh,” Says Jeremy, “ _Books._ ”

“Is _everyone_ going to just - offend me, tonight?”

“I didn’t mean grimoires,” He says. “Those are different. We have magic.”

 _Boys,_ thinks Elena. Even as men, they are boys. She thinks that they would’ve bonded over that, once; in the dark of blankets with flashlights turned on, whispering about how stupid they were, and how awkward with their attentions. Elena falls into the trap of this ‘family’ thing - they are not near as dysfunctional, she thinks, as what she knows of Elijah’s, and there is a knock on the door.

“Caroline,” Says Elijah, and she snaps her head up to see -

“Hey,” says Caroline.

“Hey.”

Vampires, she thinks, are very tight huggers, no matter what the occasion. But Caroline doesn’t look like a vampire should. _You’re an idiot,_ she can hear Damon saying, _What do you think we should look like?_ Elena would tell him, _Like you._ Caroline’s still so pretty, so beautiful and so fierce, but there is a strength in her, too. She hopes that somebody can see that strength the way that they have in her.

“So,” Says Elena, “I’m back. And you’re - a vampire.”

“That’s the story of our whole lives,” Bonnie says, a heart-broken whisper that isn’t spoken to her. Elijah’s been blocking her all night, she thinks, from the worst of their disappointment. But Caroline doesn’t look like she’s disappointed. Instead she tells her,

“It’s good to see you, Elena. I’m glad that I’ll have a friend.”

“You have Bonnie,” She tells her.

“She isn’t you, though, Elena. I miss when we were _all_ friends.”

With that, she speeds to the kitchen.

“Does Caroline always do that?” Asks Elena.

“She likes showing off,” Damon says.

“Unlike _some_ people I know,” Bonnie adds, and she silently amends her earlier answer. The only reason Bonnie won’t kill him will be because he’ll kill her first.

“Where is she -”

“We’re doing this right,” Says Elijah, pulling her back to her seat. “There are risks to these things, Elena, that we would not let you take.”

“Risks?” Asks Elena.

“The sire bond,” Says Elijah, “It bonds a young vampire to whomsoever turns them. Gives that person complete control over them.”

“So I would be at your whims,” Says Elena, “Or Damon’s.”

“Neither of ours,” He tells her. “We would not allow it, Elena.”

“Caroline -”

“Offered, as your friend, to help you.”

“Does she - does she _know_ about us?” Asks Elena.

“Everyone knows about you,” Says Alaric. She’d forgotten that he was still there. “Not that - no judgement, Elena, or anything along those lines, but -”

“It isn’t that hard to tell?”

“Thank you, Jer, for objectifying my love life.”

“You have to stop doing that, _Lena,_ ” She hears, “Or Damon won’t last through the night.”

Alaric’s the one who chokes, this time, on his wine.

“Correction,” He tells her, “I _don’t_ think I know about this.”

“Nothing to know about, Alaric. Just Elijah _embarassing_ me.”

“Getting rid of the tension,” He tells her. “It helps with the blood drinking part, sweet Elena. Makes it go down you smoother.”

“Right,” Says Elena. “Right, the blood drinking part.”

“You don’t have to be nervous,” Says Damon. “If Jeremy could do it -”

“No offense,” She says, “But that’s kind of - _really_ offensive.”

“You’re not going to yell at me?” Jeremy asks her.

“For drinking vampire blood? That would be hypocritical of me.” Damon raises his eyebrows. “Fine,” She says, “How about this: You drank _vampire blood,_ Jeremy? What the hell were you thinking?”

“That I loved somebody,” He tells her. “But even I didn’t have threesomes.”

“Jesus _Christ,_ ” Says Alaric, “I love you, kid, but you did _not_ have to go there. Your sister is not having -”

“Threesomes?” Damon asks.

“Yes,” Alaric says, “Those. This is _Elena,_ alright? She’s your _sister._ ”

“Whatever,” Jeremy tells her. “What do you think, Bonnie? You’re with me on this, right?”

“I think that I’m going to leave.”

“ _Bonbon-”_

_“‘Bonbon’?”_

“Shut it, Damon. I mean it. And - don’t start calling me Bonbon.”

“Seriously, Jeremy?” Asks Elena. “Even I can do better than that.” Elena doesn’t think that she can - she has so much more to work with than him, yet nicknaming them is a stretch. She couldn’t be more relieved to see Caroline’s needed return; and then the nerves wash over her once again, because there it is in her hand.

“You used the good crystal?” She asks her.

“It’s your deathday,” Caroline tells her. “You only ever get one.”

She thinks about that; about deathdays, and birthdays, and which one will be more important. It should mean something to her, this sacrifice they are all making, yet she only thinks of her own. And it makes her, she thinks, a worse person. A girl less deserving of love. Caroline puts the glass on the table; her strength is a vampire’s strength, and a thin splash stains the white tablecloth red. Elena cannot look at it. At everyone looking at _her._ The room is beginning to rade, and a blackness and blueness replaces, but she catches his eyes, and he gives her the saddest thing yet. _‘Lena,_ they tell her, _I’ll care about you just the same._ She can even imagine him saying it to her, though nobody else here could do. And her fingers are twitching. Elijah’s give them respite. She has a mad urge to go through everything; every memory that she has, no matter how much a lie. But she will not do it. The time for the past is behind her. Now, thinks Elena - Now it is time for the future.

“Cheers,” She says, and raises the glass to her watery, trembling lips. It shakes in her grip, and she fears that she might break it - that it might shatter, and Damon might call her a bitch - but then the blood’s in her throat, and it’s worse than she’d thought it would be. She knows her nose wrinkles, knows that it gets out a laugh, because really, she does have to laugh. But the laugh is almost a choking, so she stops it. Screws her eyes closed and just _drinks._ She’ll live in this moment forever. This one, halcyon night when she drank someone’s blood and she _hated_ the way that it tasted. She’ll cling to it like a lifeline, whenever she doesn’t feel human. Because some of her knows, though it’s hardly fair, that there is a difference, still, between feeling human and _theirs._ It reminds her of having nosebleeds, when the blood had dripped down her, sharp and metallic, lingering far after dawn.

“Cheers,” Says Jeremy, breaking the thick, halting silence. And then they have all drank, and she wonders if she feels the same. Nothing _feels_ like it’s changed, inside her. The blood isn’t healing her wounds. There are too many of those. They are buried in her like wood splinters, like somebody’s broken a stake off. She lets her clammy palms breathe. “I - bathroom,” She says, standing and not quite tripping. “I just need a minute to myself.”

She knows that they hear her, and battle it out once again. But she also knows that these two - these two are hers. For better or worse, they will give her this time that she needs. To stare at herself in a mirror that she will soon break, and see another girl’s face. _I am less than a girl,_ thinks Elena. _I have always been less than a girl._ There was a time, she imagines, when she didn’t know about this. She had been fifteen years old once, oblivious to what they were. But they had still been out there, killing. _She_ will still be out there, killing. And what will it feel like, to love them, when loving becomes so much harder? The retching is back, but it’s hers and she’s heaving up nothing. Every bone inside of her aches. She finds herself going through everything.

Every memory that she has, no matter how much a lie.

She finds herself being sixteen, and feeling the roar of the fire. His brother had sent him, he’d told her, and they’d gone farther in than she’d liked. His breath had smelled of stale whiskey. She had wondered the next day what she would tell Matt. _I’m sorry,_ she’d thought she would say, as she’d hastily brushed through her hair with hands that could no longer steady. _I met your brother,_ she’d casually told Stefan. _Stay away from him,_ he had told her. She’d thought it was too late for that. But she had not known then what being too late really meant, and every time that he slammed down onto his mattress she’d thought about telling him so. He was never too kind to her, with it. And he was always there, in the morning, spooning himself up to her like she’d _wanted_ him to be there. She can hear her own broken wails. See Isobel’s coffee cups, and the sour acridity of her. Some part of her knows that she did those things to herself, but the other parts won’t let her see it. Can’t hear past, _You’re driving me mad!_ She wonders if Isobel drank from her, ever, if they had lived together. Maybe that’s where the scars came from.

She finds herself being twenty-three, hiding away in dark places, stitching together the needing. And she finds herself at the airport, spinning to meet a kind stranger who knew her better than she knew herself. That’s what she’d seen in him: _her,_ and everything that had been taken. All that he’d yearned to give back. She finds hersel being new to the world of not-having-parents, learning that sister and mother are often one and the same. She finds herself wanting to die. When she goes back to join them, only Damon and Elijah are left.

“So,” Damon tells her, more shy, and more nervous, then she will ever get used to, “Are you _sure_ that you want to do this? Because that blood will be out, in a couple of days, if you -”

“I haven’t,” She tells them, “I’m sure.”

She meets his strange smile with one of her own, and finds herself -

“Dance with me?” Asks Elena. It has been years since she’s danced, or a day, or two days, or an eon. Elena wants warm arms around her, fingers trailing her waist. She wants to be pressed up against him, feeling his rhythm, his breeze. She bets that he sways like a cattail would sway; with a grace that defies his whole body, drawn tight in danger and thrill. She’s pulled towards him like a white-winged moth to a flame. And there is no music. No sound, she thinks, but her breathes coming strong and fast for this one, last night that she breathes. His own, matching hers in quick tempo. She wonders what she will do with them, all the things she knows she will not have need to ask him, once they are finally alike. She wonders if their ghosts will ever see fit to take flight. She doesn’t _hear_ Elijah moving to put something on, but the sound of it comes out clear. A woman is singing to them; maybe not anyone else, and Elena feels like they’re the last people alive. She cannot quite make out the words. But she turns and she sees him, redolent in suit jacket, looking as put together as he did the day that they met - both of those days, she thinks. She wants to reach out, to remember. Damon approaches her surely.

“It would be my pleasure,” He tells her.

“I missed you,” She says, as he closes himself around her. “Both of you. You were missing, I think, and I -”

“It’s fine,” Damon tells her, “Nobody blames you, alright?”

“I do,” She says, and feels the brush of his shaking.

“We’ll be working on that, sweet Elena,” She hears.

“What if we can’t?” Asks Elena, “What if there’s not enough time?”

Elijah chuckles.

“My dear, sweet Elena,” He tells her, “We’ll have all the time in the world.”

 _It’ll end someday,_ thinks Elena, as the first song fades into a new one, and she goes back over the last three minutes that she has spent here, with them. She knows that Damon is cruel and Elijah is ruthless, but she accepts them for that. She’s accepted them for it already, and takes all that cruelty, that ruthlessness with the tender. That cruelty, she thinks, and that ruthlessness; they are a part of them, too. And whatever this makes her, too, will be a part of them.

“What will I be like?” She exhales, into the dark, warm space between Damon’s shoulder and jaw. His hands are running up her, putting on just the right pressure. He is hastening her, she thinks, over the great, yawing chasm.

“The same as you’ve always been,” Damon tells her, “Just - more so,” He tells her, “At first.”

“Like Caroline was?” Asks Elena. She had listened to her flow from tangent to tangent, her kind bossiness taking over, and thought of her as something else.

“Like Elena,” He says, “Except - more Elena,” He tells her, “At first. Trust me, it’s going to be okay.”

“Yeah?” Asks Elena.

“Yeah,” Damon tells her. “You’re hardly a monster, Elena.”

“I -”

“Really?” He asks her. “Elijah mentioned this to me. I thought that he was lying. How could a smart, kind, beautiful woman think that she was a _monster?_ I’m sorry, Elena, but that just doesn’t add up. I can’t in good conscience keep letting you think that way.”

“You can’t change it,” She tells him.

“Then maybe we can,” He says, and glances over their bodies, giving Elijah - something, she thinks, that she does not care to examine. “It’s your last night alive,” Damon tells her, “Do you trust us to help make it good?”

“What,” She asks him, “Like -”

“Good,” Damon tells her, and then he is tilting her head up, and she can see into his blue. A knowing smirk’s playing across him; he knows what he does to her, she thinks, the way that his words get her weak, and he’s going to show her tonight. _They are,_ Elena decides - she knows what she wants, and she’s not scared, anymore, just to say it.

“Damon,” She tells him, matching him in his aching, “I trust you. And I think - that I felt things, for you. But I didn’t _just_ feel them for you, and I can’t - It wouldn’t be fair, unless -”

“We’re right here,” He says, “And we’re never letting you go. Not alone,” He tells her, “Together.”

“Together,” She tells him. “I think - that I can do that.”

“Mm,” Damon says, “Good. We should -”

“Kiss me,” She tells him. He does not wait for an inch. He takes her permission for everything that it is, and he’s crashing their lips together. He doesn’t kiss like Elijah. There is nothing _gentle_ about this, but all of it tells her _forgiven_ , and the heat of it creeps down her spine like tendrils of wandering ivy. His tongue pries at her lips like loose floorboards, and Elena greedily opens. There is nipping in it, she thinks, sex. All of what this is is _sex._ She knows that they must hear her telltale heart galloping, can almost feel Elijah as he sidesteps them, going off someplace else. She is filled with the horrible apprehension that he’s sickened too much to watch, but -

“Don’t worry,” He tells her, “Just _feel._ ”

Damon bites down on her lower lip and she’s gone. His fangs have come out and his lips are like honey, molasses. He knows how to get what he wants out of her; knows _just_ how to keep her in love. Because that, thinks Elena, is exactly what it must be. How perfect it feels to be with them, making her not want to leave. She realizes now she’s done nothing for him, so she goes to his buttons, attacking them with equal verve. She considers popping a few of them off, but Damon’s hands catch at hers while she’s trying to work at the seam.

“Elena -”

“Let me,” She tells him, “Please. I want to know what you feel like.”

Damon hisses.

“You _will,_ ” He says, and he pushes them out of their holes, giving her space to slide her hands into the fabric, underneath it to where he is _Damon_ and whiskey and summer’s first, fleeting day. She traces the plains of his abdomen, feeling hard muscles and loose, lingering skin. Gets to his shoulders, and her hands are far too confined; she musters her strength, pulls away from his mouth. Looks straight in his eyes while she _pushes_ the shirt from his body. It softly lands on the floor. Damon swallows, averts his gaze for a moment, and the refocuses, smirking at her once again.

“Your turn,” He says, and she can do little but nod. She has wanted this, needed this, she thinks, but - he is not giving it to her.

“I -”

“Come on,” He tells her, “We’re taking this somewhere that’s better for you.”

“ _Damon,_ ” She whimpers, “You’re _not._ ”

He snorts.

“Trust me,” He tells her. “I told you we’d do it together. This doesn’t feel like together to me.”

“Then _make_ it together,” She says, as he tubs her by shirtsleeve and vampire speed up the slow, winding stairs, to where his bedroom is -

“Candles?” She asks him. “Isn’t that - dangerous?”

“You’re in love with two vampires,” Damon says. “It doesn’t _get_ much more dangerous.” Elena stares at the room. Blankly, she thinks, still lost in the haze of his kisses. “Earth to Elena,” Says Damon, tapping her back to the world, “Hey,” He says. “Thought I lost you there for a moment. You _sure_ that you’re -”

“Ready to do this?” She asks him. “I’m as ready now as I’ll ever _be,_ Damon. I want you. _Both,_ ” She tells him, “Together.”

“Both. Together.” He says, eyebrows raised. “I think that we can arrange that.”

With a wolfish grin he is pulling away, and -

“Oh,” Elena says, “ _Fuck._ ”

She has never seen two men kiss, much less with such wild abandon. Elijah is strong like he is - far stronger - and so they can war with each other, hands pushing and clawing, teeth nipping and biting, devouring one another in kind. Elena’s eyes cloud with lust.

“Like what you see?” Damon asks.

“You’re practically _molesting_ each other,” She tells him. “That’s -”

“We’re in _love,_ ” Damon says, rolling his eyes. “We can hardly be held responsible for our actions.”

“That’s not how it works,” Says Elena. She can sidestep them too, she realizes, and does. She is standing where Damon was standing, and he has moved back seamlessly.

“You’re alright?” Asks Elena, “He did a number on you.”

“ _Excuse me,_ ” She hears, “You’re worrying about _him?”_

“Yes,” Says Elijah, barely suppressing his slyness. “In fact, I have never been better.”

His lips are swollen from kissing. From kissing _Damon,_ she thinks, who probably doesn’t love him - she cannot imagine it, anyways. But that is another thing she hasn’t thought about, yet. What they are to each other. What binds them that isn’t her. For it seems, to her, like they’ve practiced kissing before, perhaps even when she wasn’t there. They are two separate beings, but here, in this room, they are one. It courses through her, the power that long has lain dormant; the restraint that they will not show. It is want, but also a warning. They are showing Elena all she has to fear, and daring her to turn away.

“Neither have I,” Says Elena.

Many things happen, then. She is pushed to her childhood bed, and the springs dig into her back. Her line of sight is invaded with him, and his swollen lips come to meet hers. There’s ruthlessness in them, now that she’s seen what they’re capable of, and a delicious shudder wracks her as she realizes that he could _hurt_ her, if he wanted, badly. Elijah lays siege to her mouth as Damon’s hands end what they started, pulling her own shirt off. His hands roam low to her collarbone, and his fingers rub at the spot where he drank in her dream. There will be no biting tonight; she needs the blood that is in her; but she knows his sore gums must be throbbing.

“Next time,” She says, exhales, into the press of Elijah’s sharp teeth. She hasn’t felt his fangs before, but with her choice they descend, quite nearly spearing her tongue.

“Elena,” He tells her, “I’m -”

“Don’t be,” She tells him. “Let go. Do horrible things to me, ‘Lijah.”

She says it in jest, but it earns a _growl,_ and Elijah is hovering over her. Trapping her there, her slimness caged by his arms as she shrinks into the soft sheets. Damon’s fingers are barely-there on her side. If she turned her head just a centimeter she would see him, reclined lazily on his side, propped upright by one elbow. But Elijah will not let her turn.

“Have you any idea?” He asks her, “How long I have waited for this?”

“Seven years?” Asks Elena.

He narrows his eyes.

“Try a thousand.”

“We didn’t -”

“Elena,” He says, in that patient, wavering way. “It is true that we felt very deeply towards one another. However - it would be remiss of me, failing to mention -”

“That you never fucked me?” She asks him. Damon actually _laughs._ She can tell his laugh from Elijah’s, and momentarily ponders if they do the same thing, with blood and with smell and with everything else that is human. _I’m not Katherine,_ she thinks, _Why do you all think I’m Katherine?_ She feels herself tighten, but not in anticipation, and a look of regret flashes through him as claustrophobia seizes.

“Elena,” He says, “I am sorry. I had not realized -”

She flips herself out from under him, skittering into seating.

“Did you not want me?” She asks him. “Was I joke to you, Elijah?”

“ _No,_ ” He tells her, “How could you even think that?”

“I just - You never said that you loved me, but I thought - I thought we were lovers,” She says. “Isn’t this what lovers do?”

“There wasn’t time,” Says Elijah, with a true, honest look of remorse. “But I swear to you that I did not find you lacking. If anything,” He says, and lets his voice drop, “It only makes me want you more. It’s done things to me, this waiting. You would have no idea.”

“I look like Katherine,” She tells him. Knows that her voice is breaking. Knows that her heart, too, is breaking. “It was because of her, wasn’t it?”

“Elena,” Says Damon, firm with his hand on her cheek, “This has nothing to do with Katherine.”

“She’s why Klaus needs to kill me,” She says. “She was the reason we met. It has everything to do with her.” The memory forces itself onto her; the dank of the mildew-y tomb, and the way Katherine spoke, her throat dry with needing to drink. She had offered Elena the same choice, and Elena had chosen to live. But before she had done it, she’d told her about it; the sorry, delicate curse that blighted the line of Petrova. They had sat there, the hanged girl and the living one, fading into the self-same twilight of never having an option. The blood on her wrist had glistened like ripe pomegranate. The wound, in an instant, had closed. Elena feels the memory throttle, hips pushing open her hips, invading every nook and cranny of what she believes is her own. She pushes at it with all of her strength, but laughing, the memory mocks her, sending her back to the lake. Elena hated the lake - she loathed it with all of her passion, and all of her mother’s passion. Not one drop of it wasted but bled to the bottom of ocean, drained like the last amber liquor. She saw the lake behind every curtain, in every wood banister. She saw the lake inside Damon’d eyes, and it was nearly enough to make her blame him for their blueness; that blueness that spoke of her own mother dying, and leaving her, lonely, behind. She wished that she could use her body to set that whole lake on fire. At least then, she thinks, there would have been ashes, and not the pallor of corpse. Elena blinks, and Elijah, above her, is still.

“Your memories are returning,” He says. The wanting is gone out of him. Not completely, she thinks, but enough. “How long?” Asks Elijah, “How many?”

“Not many,” He tells her, “Just this.”

“Then you don’t -”

There’s insecurity in him, she thinks. He has done something that he regrets.

“There was nothing to see,” Says Elena. “Nothing that I think would matter. Can’t we just have it over with? Is that really too much to ask for?”

“Death?” Damon says, “Sweet release. But we both know you don’t really want it. My only question is why.”

“Why?” Asks Elena, as the weight is vanished from her. “Why what?”

“Why would you do this if all that it makes you is scared?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” She answers, with no small amount of reluctance. “Because I’m paying my debt.”

“What debt?” Damon asks, and Elena chokes back a groan. She hasn’t _talked_ to him about this. Not to either of them. Not really.

“The debt that I owe,” Says Elena, “For getting everyone killed.”

Damon is quick as a strobe light. Pulling her up and pushing her back so that their eyes are level. He searches through her like someone who’s truly in love. He burns with a fear-making fury.

“ _Tell me,”_ He says, “That you don’t think you owe anybody a _life debt,_ Elena. Because whatever I said to Bonnie, whatever you said to bonnie, life debts are not a real thing.”

“I can’t,” Says Elena, “I’m sorry. But you don’t know what it’s like to - to know that people have _died_ for you, Damon. This is the least I can do.”

“No,” Damon tells her, “I _absolutely_ refuse. I’m not going to let you -”

“It isn’t your choice,” Says Elena. Appeals to Elijah, the _one_ man who will respect her, but he is trained elsewhere. He has gone to the window frame, just like he had in the dream. She _needs_ him to say that she’s right - that this is her, righting her wrongs. That her decisions are hers. She can still feel Caroline’s blood in her system, roaring its way through her ears. Funny, she thinks, that in such a load roar she is only met by their silence. Theirs is the silence of ages gone by. Ages, Elena thinks, never can be recovered. “Why can’t you just kiss me again?”

“Will it convince you?” He asks her. “Elena, I need you to promise.”

“Do you think that I’m not scared to die?” Asks Elena, barreling past it.“Is that what you think about me? Damon, it terrifies me. But what would you do, to save the people you loved? You would do anything, wouldn’t you? How can you not understand that there isn’t any difference?”

“You were _eighteen years old,_ ” Damon says. “You were never responsible for them!”

“Don’t say that,” She tells him. “Not when you know it’s not true.”

“It is true,” He tells her, “Elijah -”

“Elena is right,” Comes his wariness. “She is right, about having a choice.”

“So you’re going to kill her,” Says Damon. He pushes away from her roughly to square himself against Elijah, and Elena’s heart thunders in fright.

“If it is what she desires.”

“What about me?” Damon asks him. “What about all of that ‘loving somebody’ bullshit?”

Elijah shrugs.

“I never said I was perfect.”

“You told me we’d figure it out.”

“And we have,” Says Elijah, “Elena’s made her decision.”

“She doesn’t love you,” Says Damon.

“That is not, either, your choice.”

“It’s mine,” Says Elena. Whispers it into the night. “It’s _my choice,_ Damon. It is my choice to love and it is my choice to die and I choose loving you both.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” He says.

“You always think that,” She tells him. “Has it ever occurred to you not to be such a hypocrite, all of the time? Has it _ever_ occured to you, _once,_ how big someone heart is? I may have only waited seven years for you, but it felt like it was a thousand. I can’t die without telling you that.”

“You can’t die,” Damon tells her, “Because you aren’t going to die.”

“That’s the thing though,” She tells him, “I’m not a girl, anymore.”

“Yeah?” Damon asks, “Then who are you?”

“Elena Petrova,” She tells him. “I’m the last of Katherine’s line. And this? This is your chance at revenge.”

“I got my revenge,” Damon says.

“Hurting me?” Asks Elena. “Letting me think that you did? Letting someone _else_ make me think that? Leaving me on the side of the road when you already knew I was dying? You didn’t do any of that. You just sat on it, Damon. You sat on it, and you waited. Look me in the eyes and say that you didn’t want to kill Katherine.”

“You aren’t Katherine,” He says.

She tells him,

“It’s too late for that.”

And they are just as they are. A rabbit and two hunting hawks. A soul and two hellhounds. Two lovers, she thinks, and a love. Elijah is staring at her like she’s grown a new head. She has seen that look on him before.

“I came back to you,” Says Elena, “I came back so you could have me. Me,” She tells them, “Revenge. It’s your choice, this time, but it’s all the same thing in the end.”

“What about love?” Damon asks her, “What about wanting you, ‘Lena? What do I do about that?”

“You kiss Elijah,” She tells him, “Because I thought that it was incredible. And we go from there, and we take this one night for us; for loving each other, and wanting each other; and then you tell me you love me; and it’ll be so much, when I know that you mean it, I won’t even feel myself go.”

“I can’t,” Damon tells her. “Elena, I can’t let you die.”

“But the rest?” She asks, “Do you think you could do all the rest?”

Her eyes meet Elijah’s. She sees the _tiniest_ nod before they go flickering down.

“We are doomed,” He says, “Did you not know that already?”

“How so?” Damon asks him.

“Because,” Says Elijah, dropping to crouch, to lean in, to tilt his jaw up with one finger, “We’ve grown to love a Petrova.”

“Petrovas,” Damon laughs, “Fuck them.

“Fear not,” He says, “I intend to.”

In the morning, she will be dead. But there are hours, she thinks, before then. Those hours, she thinks, as Elijah’s lips fall to Damon’s, as the streetlights blink in and out, as she feels herself sweeten with wanting and the haze of the light silhouettes them, haloing them like they’re angels - in seven years or a thousand, they are the place she will live.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my other ongoing TVD fic, I brought back an old tradition of listing the songs I've been listening to while writing here in the end Author's Notes. So just in case anyone wants a glimpse into my mind while writing this chapter, here are four songs that were on repeat while I wrote this: 
> 
> _The Wild Rover_ by Lankum
> 
>  _Shrike_ by Hozier
> 
>  _Eden_ by NoMBe feat. Geneva White
> 
> And, finally, 
> 
> _Sunday Love_ by Bat for Lashes


	8. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author's Note: Before I launch into this chapter, I'd like to apologize for taking so long to post. Certain world events have made it hard to find time to write and edit this last little while, but rest assured that I am NOT abandoning this work. I will be posting a new chapter of this fic every week until it is finished, and I know where it's going to end!**
> 
> **That out of the way, I hope that you all enjoy this chapter. I am _super, super_ excited for this chapter, as the twist in it is something I've been planning since the very beginning of this, and I hope you all love reading it just as much as I loved writing it. As always, please let me know what you think of the story in the comments below if you have any feedback or critiques. And even more importantly, enjoy the latest chapter! It feels really good to get more of this work out there, and I apologize again for the long wait. **

To live and to die as a soldier - she wakes in a soft yellow room. There are spires of writing and roses made of bronze leaf. Somebody else is with her. A woman with marigold hands, her fingers as ripe as a peach. She is clutched around rosary beads, and her hair is so black, and so fine, that the wisps of it blow away ash. She’s wracked with a spasm; another. Up snap her leonine eyes.

“ _Æta,_ ” The woman says, “Hush.”

And then Elena’s surrounded. There are figures in white, their veils trailing sparrow-wings downwards. Their keratin sharpness weaves a pine-needle blanket around her, and their sigils burn over her skin. They are every color that she has ever imagined, and many more that she hasn’t. But then she blinks, and they are alone. Every color is amber.

“ _Æta,”_ The bead-woman says. “That is the color of you.”

“I’m human,” She tells her, “I’m -”

“You are what you will become. So it was said to our mothers.”

Looking at her, Elena sees she is young. Young, but _impossibly_ old, with lines drawn of sable and skin that is porcelain-pale. Her frame is shockingly slender, and faint silver marks twist and writhe on her arms. She almost, but not quite, can’t see them. And her eyes, thinks Elena. Her _eyes._ They are lapis shot through with gold, as if one sunlit sliver was caught inside a daylight ring. She doesn’t move like a human would move.

“What does it mean?” Asks Elena.

“It is God’s word,” She tells her, “Ask him.”

“Ask… _God?”_

_“_ What else would you do, Ameera? It is the nephilim’s way.”

She smiles queer at her, then. Her teeth are growling canines.

“I don’t know what that means,” Says Elena.

“I thought that you wouldn’t,” The girl says. “It is an old poem, young blood. _Ts’alia, ts’alia. Ameera ts’alia._ The Lord chose a good name for you.”

“I’m not religious,” She tells her. Doesn’t know how her throat, how her limbs, feel so light. She had thought it would feel like it should - like she’d always thought dying would feel, lanced through with the groaning of dull knives and the thrum of her life bleeding out. She had thought that she could look down on herself and see where her body was; in a little girl’s childhood bedroom, the monkey sheets still on the bed, in the arms of the two men who love her, with her diary safe behind portrait. They are just there, right by her side, but they are surprising her, still. It is Damon to whom she is cradled. He’s lazed on the duvet, rocking her just like a child. And it is Elijah who’s pacing, wearing his way through the floor, his dead heartbeat a mile a minute. _You have to wake up,_ says Elijah; his low, Original voice. _You gave me your_ word, _sweet Elena._

_Hell,_ Says Damon, _Come here._

_I -_

_Do you want to come over or not? It might not be the_ biggest _bed in the world, but I think we can make you some room. Elena’s not_ dead, _Elijah._

_That isn’t funny,_ He tells him.

_I wasn’t laughing,_ Says Damon. And fiercely, she sees that he wasn’t. His lips had not even been quirked. _See?_ He says, as Elijah sidles his way there, _It isn’t_ that _bad, Elijah. You feel what I’m feeling? She’s warm. It’s only a matter of time._ As she watches, Elijah relaxes; relaxes, she thinks, but never loses that tension, that love that is just coming out. She hadn’t seen it, like this, before. _How_ had she not seen it like this?

“The seeing of mortals is blind,” The girl tells her. “We do not hold it against them.”

“What about _them_?” Asks Elena.

“They too,” Says the girl, “Are his sons.”

“But they are not mortal,” She tells her, and the girl is a jackal. Elena thinks the fur suits her, the moment that it’s shimmering. It looks just like Klaus’s fur had. It carries that same molten hue.

“I’m not a believer,” She tells her. Again, and louder, this time.

“It is good,” Says the girl, “They always fall, the believers. Like a star from above, it is said. Do you gaze at the stars much, Ameera?”

“I’ve looked at them once or twice.”

“What did you think about them?”

“The stars?” Asks Elena. “They’re pretty.”

“They are beautiful,” Says the girl, “As are all things borne out of truth.”

“Not love?” Asks Elena.

“No,” The girl tells her, “Not love.”

“But aren’t they -”

“One and the same?” The girl asks her. “You have much to learn, father’s daughter. Perhaps we can learn it together.”

“If we learn it together?” Elena asks then, “Who’s going to teach it to us?”

The jackal moves fast, just like a vampire would. Its hot breath licks a trail up her cheek. Its rich fur lights her on fire, but this one, it burns inside-out; roaring and writhing and culling the weakness up out of her, until everything appears green. Verdant, and fresh, like the spring grass that grows around graves. Sitting back on her haunches, her ancient eyes do not say _angel._ They tell her something far better; show her something far worse. A vision of walls painted red.

“We teach ourselves,” The girl tells her. “The house has a long time been empty. But it is a part of our blood, Ameera. No one can take it away.”

“Dying,” Elena says.

“Love,” Says the girl in return. “ _They_ are one and the same. Oh, sweet sister, you have proven that well enough.”

“I don’t think that,” She tells her. “I don’t think that they are.”

“But you do not know who you are,” Says the girl. “What you are. How can you tell me you know it of anything else?”

“The same way I give myself life,” Says Elena.

“Through the ones who have lost it before.”

There is truth to it, but she did not want this answer. She’s been running, she thinks, for seven years and eighteen more years, to someplace that it wouldn’t be. Here, it is all around her. It suffocates her like Damon’s lips on her lips, that night he snapped Jeremy’s neck. He was right, she thinks, when he told Elena she wasn’t who needed forgiveness. But if Jeremy did it - if anyone did it - then surely the girl he loves can. She thinks that she once dreamt of Isobel, telling him that; teetering on the utmost edge of the rope, her feet pointed too calmly outwards. _You could never be proud of me,_ she thinks, _Because you were not scared of dying. You welcomed it with open arms._

“So do we all,” The girl tells her, “When demons have shattered our peace.”

“I had none,” She says, and the girl shrugs too hot and too heavy.

“You want to ask me, Ameera. How the blood is in you.”

“Can I?” She asks her.

“You can do anything that you’d like.”

“That’s a lie,” Says Elena. The ashes blur in the wind.

“You haven’t tried yet,” The girl says. “Is it not at least worth a try?”

_Not if it’s fruitless,_ she thinks. _Not if it won’t bring me back._

“You have the blood,” The girl tells her, “Because it was made so, a long time ago, by those who wished you alive. It is well-known, the curse of your mothers. Your kind call them _Petrovas._ ”

“Your kind?” Elena asks.

“Something old,” She says, “And forgotten. I search for the title, but all I can find is the tale. There’s history to it, this blessing on you. A claiming that comes with the tide. I have heard that your people tell stories to children, to help them in going to sleep. Is there truth to this rumor?”

“My parents did,” Says Elena.

“Ha,” The girl tells her, “If I could answer one question, that is the one that I would. Why do your people tell stories to children, when they could teach them to pray?”

“Because,” Says Elena. “Nobody answers our prayers. Stories have endings, at least.”

“Stories,” The girl says, “Only have cutting off points. They are days and hours of time. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Then give them to me,” She finds herself asking. “Give me my days and my hours.”

“They’re _not_ yours!” The jackal snaps - porcelain pale, thinks Elena, but cut as hard as a diamond.

“There,” Says Elena, “I tried.”

A low hush comes over the breeze. She hears it for what it is.

“I made a promise,” She tells her.

“A promise to God?” Asks the girl.

“Worse,” Says Elena, “Elijah. I don’t know what it was that I promised, but I know what he’s capable of. The _things_ that he’ll do if I don’t wake up - they would put Satan to shame.”

“We don’t call him that,” She says, “Elijah.”

“What do you call him?” She asks.

“Forgiven,” The girl admits grimly. “Struck though we are from the heavens. It would not be fair, otherwise.”

“Then if you forgive him, let him have what he needs. He’s a noble person, Elijah. That’s what we call the flip side. He would go to hell for every year you would, for just those few days and hours. What more could you ask of a deal?”

The girl shakes her head. The trees bow with it, and their branches shrivel and blacken. She’s forgotten that she’s lying down. They are dying things, she thinks.

She has brought death to this place.

“I ask that you not forget,” The girl tells her, “The ones from whom you have come.”

“I won’t,” Says Elena, “I promise.”

“Oh, sweet sister,” The girl says, throwing her beads to the side, “You carry two promises, now. A heavy weight on your shoulders.”

“Tell me a story,” She says, “It might help ease up the burden.”

Your hours,” The girl says, “Your days. Your days are _numbered,_ Ameera. You do yet bear their last name. A wise woman once told you that dying and love are the same, but she did not mean it like that. _Now_ you will hear what it means. It is held in the arms of a woman, just like all of the rest. She does not look so much like you that you would’ve seen her yourself. It does not mean her daughters aren’t with her.

The times were different, then. They say that the sky was a blue that was darker, with shadows that never would leave. If a bird flew into a dark patch, it flew like a world-weary stone. Ours call those the before times. It was early in your age, and the woman was late in her sorrows. Her rosy cheeks bore thorny thickets. It had been paid for in kind. The boys, they chased after women like those, and in those days, as you well know, it was not of a fashion to run. They did not call what they did courting. It was catching and keeping, to them. Perhaps it was bad in her village, it’s lumber-less roofs raised of thresh. Or perhaps it was far more simple; they say everything true got caught in the straw. The painful memories, too. For there’d been a catching and keeping of her, and it had left her with something. _Imagine_ being that woman; taste how the air, to her, tasted, not yet filled up by your greed. Hear the words the woods whispered, guiding her path with sure feet. The trees, they knew things back then. The sun made haste to learn of what creatures it lit. She was different, this one; special. She wasn’t of the talking type. She told the ground where she wanted to go, and she walked there until her feet bled.

But that red blood, it watered the soil. It made the ground loyal to her. So the forest parted for her, and she was led to the place where he’d last been seen, and she supplicated to him. In those days, the Lord was well known. Your fool books had not yet been written, and all of your pretty lies would not be caught dead in their mouths. The woman, she only appealed. And God came to her as she loathed him to come, as the man that she wished to replace. She thought he was pretty, just like you thought of the stars. But all women think that of men, once the catching and keeping betrays them. He was a good man, she thought. He had nursed many years at her flame. And, in turn, he had nursed her; a broken-winged dove back to health. Long to their meeting, her family had been devoured. The woman knew she could ask but one question of him. She’d have asked if they’d gone to the angels, but instead resolved making them proud. _Mother forgive me,_ the woman had begged in her silence. She already knew he would not.

_You called me, daughter?_ The Lord asked of her. _Yes,_ she told him, _I did._

And it would have sufficed, that, for she’d long given up on what mortals cannot give up now. She knew that there was no use in the hiding men did of their souls. She had more to hide than a man did, more than anyone else in the world. It was high time she put it to use. _I read,_ she said, _In the songs that you gave to my fathers, those things which I am owed._

_You’re a listener, then,_ said the Lord. Some people say he looked deeply into her eyes, and saw she saw life sharp and clear. Words, they get misted like that. There is too much history, here, in your world. I find little wonder in his getting bored of it all. I think of him like he was that day in the copse. I laugh the way that he laughed. _Why have you come?_ The Lord asked the woman.

She told him, _To sell you my soul._ ”

“Stop lying to me,” Says Elena.

“I’m not,” The girl tells her. “You ask for the days and the hours, Ameera. You must take that which is given. That is the problem with your kind - you lack what you weren’t made to need. You think of the Lord unlike that woman did. God and Satan - they are nothing if not intwined. There could not be one with no other. It is much like the loving you do. This selling of souls - it was a she was owed. The woman said it herself.

_“You gave me my soul,_ Said the woman, _You we it to me to take it._

_And what do you ask in exchange,_ Asked the Lord. He was not one for trickery, him. He liked to watch what the mortals would make of their lives. But he loved them - oh, how he loved them! Their will was indomitable. He would bestow them no cruelty, yet the Lord knew when cruelty was needed. And when it was needed, he knew the need to be honest. There was none more honest than him. So he gave them their cruelty, and, as his penance, their wish. It was just _that,_ sweet sister. Now do you understand? He had not thought that this woman would ask it of him; he was sure that he knew of her soul, and yet she was standing before him.

_The blood of the angels,_ She told him, _I want my children to bear it._

_The nephilm were a mistake,_ Said the Lord, _I will need something more than your soul._

The woman stared at him calmly, so resolute that three bolts of lightnings would not have shattered her will.

_Then take it,_ she told him. _Whatever you need from me, take it. And make my girls nephilim._

What do you _think_ the Lord did? He was bound by his own rules, rules which the young woman knew of. He saw himself in her, then. He’d put too much of him in her, or something like that, it is said. She would not leave this hallowed ground until she received what she willed. Such a terrible price, he thought, to make a wronged woman pay. For more than it all, she was wronged; bereft of her love, and shunned for her obstinate grieving. The lesson in grief, it was not lost on her. That was what made her silent. That was what made her else.

The Lord told the woman:

_Your daughters will be of the angels. Their blood will be nephils’ blood. It will not be easy on them - you know of the nephilim’s path - but as you have asked, so I shall see it done. Now you will hear me, and cower. Your girls, of the blood of the nephils, will only have it inside them. It cannot mean anything. Nothing will come of it lonely. Should they face tests, and should they die of their choosing, saved by the love you have lost - only then will tehy truly be nephils. I will never owe you again. And you will bear only a son. Have you heard truly? That is the cost of your wish._

_Yes,_ Said the woman, _I’ve heard._

_And you still wish to pay it?_ He asked.

The woman said, _I have no choice. Now tell me the rest of the price._

And in her eyes, the Lord saw, lastly, knowing, and knew that he would never again call one of these creatures his; not after any of this. It would never be worth it for him. Not even, at least, to try. He came to the root of her standing, and touched the skin of his daughter. The first one to curse all her daughters, just as he had his own.

_You will burn in Hell,_ Said the Lord.

_Then I will burn,_ Said the woman. Her name was Maarja Petrova, and she is yet burning in hell. Take her, Ameera, for she is your days and your hours.”

_They are your days and your hours,_ she thinks, and a cherry tree blooms in the death. _Her_ death, she thinks, but her living. Her being whatever she is. She can picture that woman, now. She would look like Isobel did, with the same keen gleam in her of doing whatever it takes.

“You have that in you, sweet sister,” She says. Her eyes are drawn back to the girl. The girl, thinks Elena - she is a nephilim, too. Her skin is porcelain pale. It does not come from humanity, but not from vampirism either. It is not the wane-ness of death. Elena finds herself reaching. Wanting to know what it feels like, to be one of them. “You will know it,” The girl says, “Ameera.”

She looks like Isobel does.

“When did you choose?” Asks Elena. The girl tilts her head back and sighs like a human would sigh.

“I had hoped that you were not smart,” Says the girl. “It is always worse wehn you’re smart, and unknowing of such powered legends.”

“Did you know about it?” She asks.

“The nephilim blood?” Asks the girl, “The story was told to me young. I did not believe it, back then. It seemed that it could not be true. My times, also, were different than what you have lived. Among ours, there has never been God.”

“They why do you call yourself nephil?”

“It is the name I was told,” Says the girl, “By the last one who died of her choosing. She was very much like you, sweet sister. She loved what she should not have loved.”

“Didn’t you?” Asks Elena.

“No,” says the girl, “I did not. I loved what was proper and write. That’s what she told me.”

Elena finds herself standing, knowing not where the strength in it comes from. She is wearing a dress made of thick green crochet, but it might as well be slow cotton. Memories twist in its folds; shimmering strands of them, made out of emerald and bronze. Her hair, too, has taken on bronze. She sees it as if through a mirror, whipped into longness and braids.

“You look like a nephil,” The girl says.

Elena knows that it’s true. She looks back to earth, because that is what’s under the table, the one that the lemonade’s on. She will not drink it; she’s read all her myths, and the girl seems to find it amusing. She’s sitting, still, on who she loved. But Elena will not let her have it.

“He died,” She asks, “Didn’t he?”

“Why must we talk about this?”

“It’s the right thing to do,” Says Elena, “Aren’t us angels the good guys?”

“Nephilim,” Says the girl. “We are not the same as the angels. We are more human than they.”

“What does that make us?” She asks.

“That is the question, Ameera. The honest tales talk about us - the ones that have not been recorded, for the truth of them burn through a page. I know we are not like the seraphim, though; we were not made to do good. The honest songs say that once many of us walked with man. We were women and men, but we were nephilim, all. We gave them our language and sired our children on them, and our wings were a sign of something that once had been sacred, but which still carried great power. We were considered… harbingers, your kind would say. Signs of the dying to come.”

“We were the fallen ones, then.”

“There is no such thing as fallen,” She scoffs. “The fallen ones, they are yours.”

“Vampires?” She asks her.

“Humans,” The girl tells her, “Man. You have forgotten yourselves.”

_Forgetting,_ she thinks - what she wouldn’t give to never hear that she has.

“What will I be?” Asks Elena.

The girl tells her,

“Just as you are.”

“And you aren’t going to help me?”

“You are a nephil, Ameera. You need nobody’s help. You carry the blood of the angels in you - it burns through your veins, holy fire. You absolve your own sins, sweet sister. You make your own path in the world. Far be it from me to tell you what path it will be. Not even the angels are prophets.”

“But I -”

“No,” The girl tells her, “You will not be one of them. You will live as a nephil would live, and it will bring you great trying. The words the Lord spoke to our mother - do you remember them, yet?”

“I remember,” She tells her, “I promised.”

“Then you know,” Says the girl, “The cost of this dying you’ve done. It matters not that you won’t have to pay it.”

“Nadia is,” Says Elena, more to herself than the girl. “Why did she - why did she want it so badly?”

“Tatia,” The girl says, and blinks.

And just like that, she remembers. Not who Elijah has told her about, but the women that she has been; reborn and reborn and reborn. Katherine could’ve been this, she thinks, if she had not been a coward. But Tatia would never have been. She had not truly loved him. Maybe nobody had. That’s why he’s starting to cry. _You have to wake up now,_ he tells her, _Elena, you_ have _to wake up._ Even Damon is filling with scared-ness. He can no longer say that in her being warm it is fine. They are falling apart in her hands, and her hands, they are not even on them. She wishes that they would just kiss each other; find some kind of comfort in waiting, instead of jumping the minute the doorbell rings. Elijah’s eyes harden up in an instant. He’s out of the bed, down the stairs from her bedroom, throwing open the door. And Elena is left inside Damon’s wavering calmness, cracks in the thinning veneer. _Elijah is right,_ Damon says, _God, I’m so pissed at you, ‘Lena._ Elena chokes back a sob. _God,_ she thinks. _If you knew what I know about that -_

“They won’t understand me,” She says, to the emptiness of the air, to the brush of the beads into her.

“Pray,” The girl tells her, “Pray with your mothers, Elena. You cannot escape it much longer.”

“Escape what?” She asks her.

“Your fate.”

_And who do I pray for?_ She wonders. She is a nephil, but she cannot pray to God. There is no God, thinks Elena. God would not let them suffer the way that they have. There is darkness, she thinks, and light. _One day,_ she prays, to the greatest thing that she knows - the men that she loves, one of whom screams at her brother with the fury of three thousand men - _I need it to just be enough._ And the memories flood into her as she floods back into her body. Damon’s watching her, rapt. He has since that first, choked sob. She coughs out the beads like they're seawater, feeling her throat squeeze and constrict around them.

‘Lena?” He asks her. His eyes are tautened with worry. _Real_ worry, she thinks. Real fear. “You - where -”

“Damon,” She says, “I’m not dead.” It is a blur, then, but she takes it in like she should be. Mites of dust float in the room. She sees imprints of herself everywhere. She lies in her body and twenty-six years worth of bodies; the shifting, mutating forms of the rest of them pile and churn into one cursed amalgamate. Their outlines are hazy. Their faces will not stay in place. But Damon is etched out so starkly. She throws herself onto his body, burying fingers in hair. _You were the crow,_ thinks Elena, as the oily blackness shrouds her in being alive. In being _alive,_ thinks Elena. “Damon,” She says, “I’m alive. Look at me - I’m _alive._ ”

It comes to her just like breathing, knowing the right thing to say. It must be a nephilim trait. He is staring at her in horror, but the horror is fading to awe.

“I look different,” Elena asks, “Don’t I?”

And Damon is clutching her, drawing Elena back in. She feels every muscle of him, every bone that he’s sculpted around. His hands are consuming her body, circumnavigating her long, downy sweater. _“Elena,_ ” He breathes out, _“Elena.”_ She can hear the yelling downstairs still, bleeding up through the floor, but she couldn’t care less about it. She pulls far enough out to roam Damon’s face. He seems to have aged a hundred-fifty more years in a night.

“Elijah -”

“He’s dealing with things,” Damon says. It answers her question for her. _Yeah,_ it tells her, _He heard._ She strains to pinpoint him, find where he is in the house; but his voice is too loud for containment. She thinks it could be anywhere.

“Why is he yelling?” She asks him, “Why is Jeremy here?”

“He - he found something in the journals.”

Elena lets her eyes find his again. She thinks that they are the lake. They’re as cold, and as clear, and just as deadly to her. She can see how old he is, now. His age is an aura around him, a halo, but not one of light. It is the old, faded blue of a traveling guide, hidden away on a shelf. Something a mother passed down. The pages are handwritten, yellowed, but the painstakingly-writ letters _glow,_ ring out and chime with the force of their loyalty-love. The blueness makes Damon’s skin twice as reserved, twice as false where it shows reckless, and the ghosts of black curls swirl over his forehead. The footprints on his sand are dark suspenders, a shirt so translucent that she can _see_ Damon’s heart jump and twitch. But those are only his fingers, worrying over each inch of skin he can get.

“I have to - _Elijah,_ ” She tells him, “He thought I was dead. He thought I was actually _dead,_ I have to -”

“He loves you,” Says Damon. He doesn’t sound strong, anymore. He sounds like when he was a man; a real, human man. _I want you to,_ he had told her, pausing outside of the door. She was beautiful to him. He didn’t yet know he should run. She never straightened her hair. Her eyes, in the mirror, are just like the nephilim’s are. They are emerald shot through with warm honey, a steady drip out of a faucet. Every shade of the woods in her, she thinks. The growing things there which Maarja once had walked through. He’s on a mattress, and Stefan is there, and she will not think about that. He is so _young,_ thinks Elena - the man that she loves is a _boy,_ and he doesn’t _know_ any better. She feels her heart break in two. And then, she thinks, she has two. One for him, and one for Elijah. Soon, she will see his pain, too. She will take it all into herself, burn it out of their veins. The fire is calling her. Begging her for a blade to set its’ wild power free, and Elena feels herself bronz; the hush of a river across her. The bridge of her body goes inwards, into something else that is green. Her joints pop and crackle; she is impossibly tiny, impossibly _beautiful._ She feels her wings flutter, sees them like camera frames, and she flits until her beak hovers, thin as a flute of champagne, right at the apex of him. When she shifts again there are lips on her lips, and she pours her fire in him; feels him hiss as he is forgiven. Breaking off of her. Panting hard.

“ _Elena,”_ He says.

“I’m a nephil,” She tells him, “I’m a nephilim, Damon. She didn’t say what it means.”

She finds herself crying, wrenching away from his hold. He can’t ask what she’s saying by it. The tears hit and the smoke’s coming up. They are little fires, from what she can tell. Embers to singe and to spark. The smoke rises off of them bronze. _That’s what it means,_ thinks Elena. _You can never touch someone again. The blood’s burning through you. You’ll die at the hands of that fire._ She has heard that when fire comes, it is best to go low; crawl to where you are safe. She rakes through her hair and she falls to her knees and she _wails._ The walls crumble around her to forest. Trails from the ruts of a wagon. The voices of children invade. The girl looks like her, and the boy looks just like her brother. She is asking her mother why she and her father got married, and her mother is smiling, happy. _It was spring,_ she says, _And I was tired._ She stood at her coffin and thought to herself: _Who will be tucking you in?_

_I hear them,_ A woman with red hair tells her. The storm’s in her face, and she’s so new to this, but she’s taking to it so well. There is blood in her teeth and it drips down her neck, and this fire, this fire _destroys._ She is kissing Alaric, helping his wounded heart heal. She is dead; she is buried, with them. _Elena!_ He screams, _Let me heal you!_ His darkness is burning with something - and the thing that he said he was doing, the keeping of her spirit safe, is so effortlessly betrayed. _I’ll come back,_ she tells him, _I give you my word._ Elena paws at the floorboards. They are gone and they are back and they are just being built, and the stars wink and war and _collide,_ overhead; gunshots, inside of her ears. _I did it,_ she thinks, _I came back. I kept my promise, Elijah. I kept my_ promise _to you._ And whatever is out there, it kept its promise to her. Even thinking it is a spark.

She is choking on it, on the blood. She spits it out of her silver, and it hits the ground like she’s poured gasoline over it. The flames burn a ring around her. When she opens her eyes, she can see him, as if she has summoned him here. He stands in the doorway, haunted and scared and disheveled. She has not seen him disheveled, before. Not even kissing him blind.

“Elijah,” She tells him. It feels like stepping on razors. “I kept my promise to you.”

“Sweet girl,” He tells her, “Sweet, sweet Elena, I know. Let go out of you. _Breathe._ ”

He is crossing the room to her, crossing it in one fell sweep, and she skitters back to the wall. The fire comes with her, leaving its sigils behind. They tell her she loves him, and knows that he cannot approach. They are like grease-paper, vampires are. She still remembers the way that he loved his brother. How he pulled him out by the stairway; doing it for her, back then.

“Elena,” He says, “Let me _heal_ you.”

“No,” Says Elena, “Elijah, Elijah, I _can’t._ ”

“Nonsense,” He tells her. If she were not burning, she’d think he was grasping at straws. “You said it yourself, you’re alive. Living things breathe, sweet Elena. Living things -”

“I’m not living,” She says, “I’m a nephil. She said I’m a _nephil,_ Elijah. She told me about Maarja.”

“Who -”

Elijah silences him with a look, and Elena is _wailing. Wailing_ through looking at him. He isn’t pretending. She watches as he goes cruel.

“Elena,” He tells her. There is no vervain in her bloodstream, but even Originals, she thinks, cannot compel her mind now. But his voice - his _commanding - is_ something. “You will stop throwing a tantrum and _you will come back to me._ ”

She takes just one slighted breath. The air rushes into her lungs, and the spinning goes still. It is gone from her seeing, Katherine sinking her fangs in. She exhales, sparkless, and the last of the fire goes out. He is _there,_ thinks Elena. Elijah, he is just _there._ Gathering her, like Damon had done. Pulling her up, dusting her off, letting his slim touches linger.

“Why’s Jeremy here?” Asks Elena. “Damon already lied to me, ‘Lijah. I want you to tell me the real reason.”

“Leave it,” He says, “For tomorrow. It isn’t the time, there are -”

“More pressing matters?” She asks him.

Elijah says,

“You’re not dead.”

His voice cracks. And she sees his mask fall away as he takes shape inside of her mind. Without a suit, with only notions and five younger siblings to love, he is more Elijah than ever. She fumbles for him, trails a hand through his unruly tresses, before the sad look in his eyes reminds her that he’s had them cut. He does not wear his age like Damon; he wears it more crisply, more careful than anyone else she has known. Elena does not need to ask him. She knows everything he has lost. How little of it is within her. There is no promise that she could make him - not of still being human, not of turning and staying forever - that could ever get rid of it all. But she is a nephilim now. She knows how to relight their souls. And she thinks she can start with a touch. One fleeting, ephemeral touch. She pushes her nails to his scalp, shivers her way back and down. The part of his hair is a miracle to her. The part of his tangerine lips.

“I’m cursed,” She says, “It’s a blessing. A story, she said. I don’t know if it’s true.”

“You going to tell it, princess?” Asks Damon. He has regained some semblance of who he was when they met; that cold, calloused man who was _that_ close to being a ripper. The man who made the decisions, and let her hate him for that.

“It’s not in the Bible,” She says, “The Bible - she said it’s not real. She said that it came from a song. She said that there was a woman, and she was my - _our -_ ancestor. Her name was Maarja Petrova. She told me that she sold her soul. Walked right up to ‘God’ - if that’s what you want to call it - said ‘take everything that I have, and let my children be nephilim.’ She was widowed, she told me, and pregnant, and whatever created us… took it.”

“Took her soul,” Damon asks, “Like the devil.”

“There is no devil,” She tells him. “She told me that, too. There is no God, and there is no devil, and even if there was once, she said that there’s not anymore.”

“What,” Damon asks, “God just left?”

“That’s what she said,” Says Elena. “That was as much as she knew.”

“What about -”

“Nephilim?” Asks Elena. “She said that we are what we are. Some stupid thing about siring children on mortals in something she called the ‘before times’. I don’t know, Damon. She said that she didn’t know, either; what it is that we _are._ Just that it would be horrible for me, and that our foremother, Maarja’s, burning for us in hell.”

“Hell,” Says Damon. She does not know if he means to say hell or say _hell._ He will not look in her eyes. And it is, she thinks, so much worse - so much worse than when she thought he hurt her, because now, thinks Elena, she _knows._ “Katherine?” Damon asks. She is glad that he isn’t looking. She can’t stand to see what he feels.

“It didn’t - she didn’t do what it takes. It - she said that you have to die, in order to be one of us. You have to - die for somebody you love.”

“Then they made a mistake,” Damon says.

“Salvatore -”

“No. They made a _mistake._ You’re not an _angel,_ Elena. You’re not even here right now, are you? I’m going crazy again.”

“ _Damon,_ ” Elena says, “ _Stop._ Look at me, Damon - _Look at me, Damon._ ” Her voice comes out amber, and she sees him get caught in it. His eyes drag up involuntarily, and she puts her steel into it. The _love_ that she feels for him. It was once two days old, but now it is years more than that. The fire is burning in her. It is clean, thinks Elena. It’s burning her sins out of her, and all of her uncertainty. There will be no hesitation. He needs her, and she will be here.

“How -”

“Stop asking me questions,” She says. “The only thing you need to know is that I’m not going to leave you. Do you know what she told me, about us? She told me that nephils aren’t angels. She said we’re more human than them. And she told me that I didn’t love the right way. She told me that I only _loved._ They’re the same thing, she said, dying and love. You can’t die if you haven’t loved something. You want to know why it didn’t work for Katherine, Damon? She turned for herself. Not for you, not for Stefan, not for anybody who wasn’t named Katherine Petrova. She isn’t a nephil because she didn’t _die._ When you die, you still have a soul.”

_When you die,_ thinks Elena. His death is not there, in the room with them, but she knows it is coming for him. It is only a matter of time. Somebody told her that, once - she thinks that it might have been him. Katherine hung herself; it could have been in the before times. If she focuses, she can feel the coarse rope on her own neck, and her body is limitless, weightless. It is a stupid thing, she thinks; not worth crying over a day, not when she’s here with them, but she misses her nephilim clothes.

“I’m -”

“Don’t,” She says, “Don’t tell me sorry. This wasn’t exactly part of the plan. But we’ll deal with it, yeah? Just like with everything else.”

“You’re calm,” Damon says, and she grins.

“He rubbed off on me,” She says. Feels Elijah’s small smirk. It’s a good enough place to start.

“Do me a favor,” Says Damon. “Next time that we need to kill you - _try_ to give us a warning that you’re going to come back a -”

“Nephil,” She says, “Nephilim.”

“I always thought they were seraphs,” He tells her, and Elena is sparked with a shock. “Good to know I can still surprise you. I _did_ read the Bible, you know.”

“I - Yeah,” Says Elena, “I know.”

“ _‘Course_ you do, princess,” He tells her. “I guess that we should be lucky you didn’t come back as one of the flaming-wheel things.”

Elena laughs. It’s her first laugh re-living. It _hurts._ She thinks it must show on her face, and it warms her to her very core. She still won’t be composed like Elijah.

“Elena?” She hears, and shakes herself, fiercely and free.

“You’re _Elijah,”_ She says, “You’re the _prophet._ ”

The mood becomes crystal and breaks.

“You terrified me,” Says Elijah, “I thought that it didn’t work.”

“I saw,” She tells him, and - “Here,” She says, “This will help.”

“My suit jacket?” He asks her.

“Mmhm,” Says Elena, slowly advancing to him. He gave her time to be Damon’s, but now she needs to be _his._

“I can put my own suit jacket on,” Says Elijah, but Elena will not hear of it.

“You could,” She says, “But how about you let me?”

It smells like him, she thinks. It smells like the _man_ that he was, if modern hygeine’d existed. She wants to live in that smell. Make a home there and never grow old. It fits him like she will - she can _make_ him that promise, too. He will _know_ what a nephilim feels like. If they’ve very lucky, she thinks to herself, there’s a chance it might not even burn.

“There,” Says Elena, when jacket is shrugged over shoulders. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Jeremy?” Asks Elijah.

“Tomorrow.”

“Elena,” He says, “Sweet Elena.”

“You told me that it could wait. I trust you on that, Elijah. I think I can trust what I trust, now. I mean, _trust_ it. More than I could.”

“I think you can compel us,” Says Damon. He’s reclaimed his spot on her bed.

“I didn’t mean to,” She tells him. The guilt is just now setting in.

“I didn’t say to say ‘sorry’,” He says. “I just thought you should try it on him.”

Elijah raises his brows, bares his teeth. There is no threat in it at all.

“The one who could rip off my head?” Asks Elena.

“You’re an _angel,”_ He says, “I bet that you’d grow another.”

And so, thinks Elena, she turns. It is not turning - not the way they had thought - but it brings something new with it, still. The promise of a future, if the channel isn’t too deep. Elijah appraises her. Stares at her. Keeps himself perfectly still.

“It’s your choice,” She tells him, “I get it if you don’t want to -”

“It’s fine,” He says, “Go ahead.”

“You’re not afraid that I’ll - Mess something up?” Asks Elena.

“I think we should know what we’re dealing with here,” Says Elijah, “And -”

“You like it,” She says, with a knowing-ness to it that takes the surprise of it out. “Somebody else in your head. You’ve always wanted the door to open both ways.”

Elijah nods curtly.

“I don’t know how to do this,” She tells him. “I don’t know what to - I don’t know what you want me to ask.”

“Something that I wouldn’t do,” Says Elijah, “If you want to see if it works.”

“Okay,” Says Elena. She thinks on it long and hard. “If this goes wrong, though, I need you to make me a promise. I need to know you won’t hurt me.”

“I give you my word,” Says Elijah. “You’ll come to no harm at my hands.”

Elena trails her hand back. Soothes her hair to one side, tilts her neck up to him. The pulse point is there, and she knows that it’s driving him crazy. She might not be human, but she is human enough. And it is the _pulse,_ thinks Elena, that they hadn’t thought she’d still have.

“Elena,” He asks her, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Compelling you,” Says Elena. “I want to see if it works.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Says Damon. Not concernedly, she thinks. _Intrigued._ And maybe, just maybe, a little bit crazy himself.

“I want to,” She says. “We should know what we’re dealing with here.”

She plays her fingers across it, pressing down on the thump of her artery, scraping it with her nails. Winces at him, and winks.

“Elena,” He tells her, “Elena, I gave you my word.”

“You did,” Says Elena, “Now _break it._ ”

She has less than a minute to wonder if Damon was wrong - if somehow he’d only been too ashamed to admit that he loves her that much. But to think about Maarja, she has an age. She sees her like she is a painting; a painting that looks like her mother. That is where the curse started - not with Esther Mikaelson, but with a woman who knew far more than she could let on. Elena remembers what the girl told her. _He’d put too much of him in._ Or something like that, thinks Elena. If he is the devil - if he is anything at all - then the curse that she bears just makes _sense._ It is not a scar, and it is not a blight. It is not, she thinks, even a plague. It’s love, she thinks. Only love. That is the part of it in her. Nobody, nowhere, should ever _love_ someone like this. It makes Elena absolved. _Don’t worry about me,_ she thinks, to anyone who will listen. _I may be burning, but I am burning for love._ There is nothing better to burn for. Yesterday, she was a girl. Tomorrow, she’ll be a nephil. Less than one minute ago, she told Elijah to _break it._

In less than a minute, he bites.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As is customary, here are four songs that I blasted on repeat while I was writing this chapter. If you want to get into my headspace, feel free to listen to them. Also, for anyone who is wondering, I used a lot of inspiration when creating my version of the nephilim, and I drew _mainly_ from _Many Waters_ , by Madeleine L'Engle, which is one of my favorite books of all time. If you are not familiar with the book or the series it came from, I highly recommend reading the whole thing, but _especially Many Waters._ I also liberally used my imagination. 
> 
> And, of course, the songs: 
> 
> _Gimme Love_ by Joji
> 
> _1950_ by King Princess
> 
> _Foreigner's God_ by Hozier,
> 
> And lastly, 
> 
> _The Pink House_ by The Gloaming


	9. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author's Note: Bet you didn't think I'd be updating this again anytime soon.... Yeah. I feel awful about how long it's been since I posted a chapter for this. I could say a lot of things about it, and give a lot of excuses, but I figured that it would probably mean more to give you guys an actual chapter, and to let you know that even if it has been awhile, I do not plan on abandoning this work. That being said, I hope you enjoy the chapter as always, I did put a lot of time into it, and if you have any feedback for me, let me know in the comments below.**

There are things that she cannot forget. They do not seem like they’re real.

Elijah’s fangs are not longer than Damon’s - she had almost thought that they would be, but does not exactly know why. When they pierce her, they are not gentle. It is done with the choiceless-ness _she_ has brought down upon him, and lasts for barely a second. She is breathing hard when he pulls away, and Elijah looks furious.

“I’m sorry -”

“Don’t,” Says Elijah, “We know what we’re dealing with here. I’ll start myself on vervain.”

“Elijah - “

“There are so many things that I wouldn’t have done,” Says Elijah, “Why would you ask me to hurt you?”

“I don’t know,” Asks Elena, “Why did you not want my blood?”

“Is that what you think this is?”

“Actually,” She says, “Yes. You hardly even took any - how long has it been since you fed?”

“I am a thousand years old,” He tells her, “I have control over my urges.”

It is not what she asked and he knows it.

“I could make you tell me,” She says. “I don’t want to, but, if I needed to, then…”

“It really matters to you?”

“Yes,” Says Elena, “It really matters to me, that you think I’m not - “

“Not what?” Asks Elijah. He is _just_ bringing his eyes up.

“Not desirable to you.”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. She even hears Damon wince.

“That’s why,” He says, as if he deos not want her to hear it. “Elena, I -” He breaks off, shakes his head. “Your blood,” He says, “It was hot. I thought it was going to burn me.”

“I’m not human,” She says, “Anymore.”

_It will not be easy on us,_ she remembers. It washes its’ way over her. Everything she has been forced to lose. Everything she cannot give them, and all she can’t take for herself. She will never be _human_ again. It comes out of her body ragged. She does not want them to touch her. _She_ is the nephilim, here.

“Elijah,” She tells him, “I’m sorry. I thought -”

“Wrong,” Elijah says, “Obviously.”

“Can you forgive me?” She asks him. Damon is holding his breath.

“Give it time,” Says Elijah. “You’re no longer human, Elena. I sense that you might have plenty.”

With that, he is sweeping away, and Elena looks at the floor. It is covered in scorching and sigils. Looping letters that no one else save her can read.

“What do they say?” Damon asks her. His voice is quiet. Like everything will be, she thinks.

“That I made the right choice,” Says Elena. It is not what she thinks they should say. They should tell her that she is a fuck-up, that she should have never come back. That it would’ve been better to die and stay dead than to hurt him the way that she has. And maybe Damon is reading her mind - maybe the nephilim broadcast - because he is motioning her.

“You should sleep,” Damon tells her. “It’s Elijah, he’ll come around.”

“Not this time he won’t,” Says Elena. She doesn’t know how she can tell. But it will be more than a day, she thinks, for this aching wound to scar over. The nephilim heal like vampires do, but their healing leaves scars behind, and the silvery faintness of where he has bitten her shimmers beneath the low lamps. Damon presses his fingers against them, rubbing the sorrow away, and she feels fire come to her skin.

“Stop,” She tells him, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Damon’s brows furrow, and his lips crease briefly downwards, but he pulls his fingers away. The fire inside her abates, for a moment, and she sees past its searing pain.

“I”m sorry,” She says, “I just - I feel like I’m going to hurt you. I feel like I already have.”

“How?” Damon asks her.

“By not being Katherine,” She says. She says it so quiet, so low, that even Damon can’t really pick up. But she has that tone in her voice, the one from going to Georgia, and he purrs a _shh_ to her ear. Strokes a loose strand behind.

“You’re right,” He says, “You’re not Katherine, you’re Elena. I like you better, you know.”

She chokes out half of a laugh. It’s lost in the sound of the waves.

“Elena,” He says, “You don’t know him.”

“I do, though,” She tells him, “I know the whole - sordid romance. He wasn’t lying to me.”

“He’s just who he is,” Damon tells her. “He’s an _Original vampire,_ Elena. When you live for as long as Elijah, you learn how to cope with yourself.”

_I burned villages to the ground,_ Elena remembers him saying. _I razed whole families and painted the fields in their blood. How can you bear to touch me?_ She did not know how to answer him then, but she thinks she will pay for it now. Every time that she closes her eyes, she hears her brother’s neck snap. Feels him pushing her up to the wall, forcing his wrist into her. _I hope._ Elena. _Dies._ She remembers being seventeen; how sometimes it seemed like she almost believed he was kind, instead of the other way ‘round. Elijah’s trying of slang. And -

“You let him go,” Says Elena.

“Yeah,” Damon says, “One more year. We thought that if we could protect you, and let Stefan do his own thing… the Klaus thing would work itself out.”

“Did you ever come up with something?”

“Elena,” He tells her, “You don’t know how hard we tried.”

“That’s a ‘no’, then,” She says.

“We spent every day trying,” He barrels on, “Do you think that it wasn’t horrible for me, losing the two people that I loved most in the world, to -”

“An Original?” Asks Elena.

“I was the one who un-daggered him,” Damon says. “It was you, the first time, but after - I didn’t want him to see you like that. He _loved_ you, Elena. I couldn’t let him see you like that.”

“You didn’t seem to have any qualms about it when you were the one who was dying,” She says. It sounds harsh, she realizes, quickly - she needs to get good at it, having a filter again.

“It’s uncanny,” He tells her, “You -”

“I get how you think now,” She says. “It’s just - something that I understand.”

“Then you know he’ll forgive you,” He tells her.

“Someday,” She says, “Not tomorrow.”

“We’ll work him down,” Damon says. He’s flirting with her, and so what if it sounds somewhat weak still? He is trying to figure it out, and Elena is happy for it. She does not deserve it, and he doesn’t either, but that was a rule that got thrown away long ago.

“I don’t know if I’m -”

“What?” Damon asks her.

“Immortal,” She tells him, steeling herself for his gaze. Her eyes shine so brightly with everything green and alive, but she knows that she won’t be forever. _Your days, your days are_ numbered. “I think I might burn myself, Damon. Not in a year, or eighty, but - I won’t last as long as you do.”

“What is it?” He asks her, “The burning? I’m not -”

“It’s nephilim blood,” Says Elena. “She told me that it’s holy fire. I can burn your sins out of you.” Damon goes quiet, and pensive. “I don’t think you need me to, Damon,” She tells him, “But that’s what I think it would do.”

“You aren’t sleeping,” He finally says.

“I’m not tired,” She tells him, “Just thinking. About - all of this. Mystic Falls.”

“Yeah?” Damon asks her.

“Yeah,” Says Elena. “I used to think that if I wasn’t born here, no one I loved would have gotten hurt. But then I realized - I wouldn’t have known them. It would’ve just happened to somebody else, and I wouldn’t even be _me,_ without them. What if I’d never met you?” She asks him, “Who would Elena Gilbert be if she didn’t know the Salvatores?”

“You’d be safe,” Damon tells her. She has never heard him sound so bitter and sad.

“That’s not what I meant,” Says Elena. “I just meant that - You’re part of me, Damon. You, Elijah, this town. You’re the _biggest_ part of who I am. If anyone took that away from me, I just wouldn’t be that same person.”

“Not a person,” Damon reminds her.

_No,_ thinks Elena, _But yours._

“Elena,” He says, “I know you don’t everything. When I turned, I didn’t either. But I knew that I’d be alright. Will you be _alright?_ ” Damon asks her. His heart sounds like shattered, like staked.

“I hope that I will,” Says Elena. “I think - I get this feeling,” She tells him, “That I just have to keep going, and take whatever comes at me, until I don’t, anymore. I get the sense that I’ll know when that time comes.”

Elena _knows_ that she will. Part of her died when they killed her. Not the biggest part, she thinks, but some. The dead know when they need to leave. And part of her’s dying right now - the part that coaxed her into the shower, ran his hands through her hair and washed her like she was a girl. _Elena,_ he’d told her, _It will be easier, soon. I promise._

_How do you know?_ She had asked him, _How can you promise me that?_

_Because,_ He had told her, _I’ve lost my family, before._

_How?_ She had asked him. Those three letters were all that she’d known how to say. Elijah had looked at her long.

_Niklaus,_ He’d told her, _Liked to dagger us too._

_I never apologized, did I?_

_You didn’t need to,_ He’d told her, _Your actions more than sufficed. However, I would caution you strongly against trying to do so again._

_Because you’re so noble,_ She’d scoffed. Elijah had sighed through the spray.

_I did what I did,_ He had said, _For the same reason you let yourself die. I am sorry for the harm that it caused you, but I cannot be sorry for hoping._

_You’re a vampire,_ She had told him. _I thought that you didn’t have hope._

_You’ve been with the Salvatores too long,_ He’d said, and they’d shared that instant to laugh. She had been naked. He hadn’t.

_Elijah,_ She’d told him, _Your clothes are going to_ soak.

_Hush,_ He had told her, _It could be worse,_ He had said.

_Could it?_ She’d asked him.

_Sweet Elena,_ He’d told her. _You know me. It could be blood._

Her mind had gone over to Stefan, ripping through cartilage, bone, and it told her, _You’re not good enough. You weren’t_ good enough _for him to stay._ Elena had started to cry then. She was human, and had hope, that Elijah’d not notice the tears. It was only the water, she’d hoped he would think, but the way that his lips pursed had told her he’d already seen. His hands had tugged her more roughly, working the knots without preamble. It was like he was saying: _Nothing can hurt you again._ Not _nothing will; nothing_ can. And Elena’d leaned into the pulling, felt that he was not wrong. It stung, but it did not hurt her. She’d been far too numb for that.

“I’ll stay with you,” She says, “Damon, as long as I can. I’m not just going to leave you.”

“But you will make me hurt you,” He tells her, “You’ve _already_ done that, Elena. Did you think that I’d just - forget that you spent almost half your life thinking I -”

“No,” Says Elena, “I’d thought that you would listen to me when I told you it wasn’t your fault, and not put all that blame on yourself.”

“Who else can I blame?” Damon asks her. “Some of them were still true - We left behind who everyone _was._ And I was the kind of man who you believed would’ve done that to you. I can’t ever come back from that.”

“I don’t want to argue,” She tells him, “But there isn’t a thing to come back from. I’m done playing games with you, Damon. Either we all deserve having each other, or none of us get it at all. I’m a nephilim, not a god. I can’t _make_ you forgive yourself.”

His eyes bore into her eyes, and she shakes her head resolutely.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” Says Elena. “ _Or_ to Elijah. Never again.”

“What if I asked you to?” Damon asks her.

“Would you?” Asks Elena, “If I asked you to compel me? Would you _honestly_ be able to do that?”

“It depends on what you would ask for. On what you would want to forget.”

“Damon,” She tells him, “I would have asked to remember.”

“Remember what?” Damon asks her. He is slipping back into his cold place, and she breathes a hot breath onto him.

“The night that you told me you loved me. It would’ve been easier, then.”

“I don’t -”

“Not in a bad way,” She hastens, “But it would’ve been _easier,_ Damon, not to hate myself like I did. For all of what happened back then.”

“Elena,” He asks,near incredulous, “What did you hate yourself for?”

“Loving you,” Says Elena, “Instead of the person I should’ve.”

_I loved what was proper, and right,_ the girl’d told her. And she could have done that herself. She wonders if she’d ever looked at Damon, before. If she had, thinks Elena, then she would’ve done the same thing, no matter how ‘not right’ it was. There was something about him she’d seen. It had floated around in him, simmered. His fingers were slender; when they were wrapped around glasses of whiskey, she’d seen them writing poems. There was never a doubt in her mind that night. Everyone could have been dying, but Katherine _hadn’t been there,_ and Elena had known as if she were a nephil that he _needed_ to know that she would be. She had held him there, from behind, and pressed her nose against his black leather jacket. Breathed in the spice and the pine and the _heartbreak_ that he called his life. She’d understood what Stefan had told her he’d said in that moment: if she died, then it might have stopped hurting him, for a time. He wouldn’t have had to feel like he needed emotions. So Elena looks at the bedsheets, sees herself sleeping in them. Tossing and turning and having her nightmares, right after her parents died. She will not start crying; she won’t let her silver tears burn. _Angels don’t cry,_ thinks Elena, _And neither should nephilim._

“What’s wrong with my brother?” She asks him.

“You said we would wait for tomorrow.”

“It’s midnight,” She says, “Tell me now.”

“He died,” Damon tells her. Elena sits bolt upright.

“ _What,_ ” She asks, “Is he -”

“This was years ago, ‘Lena,” He tells her. “You were otherwise occupied, but Bonnie was Bonnie, and she used her witch powers to do some kind of crazy necromancy ritual. That was _exactly_ how she described it. And Jeremy came back to life, he just brought some dead things back with him.”

“Explain,” Elena says, “Now.”

“He can see ghosts,” Damon tells her, “Apparently, there’s been some trouble with yours.”

“I don’t have a ghost,” Says Elena, but she _knows._ She looks at him and she _knows._ “Damon,” She asks him, “How long was I dead?”

“Long enough for you to say shit,” He tells her, “That you didn’t tell me or Elijah.”

“Let me -”

“You’re weak,” Damon says, “You need to get back your strength.”

“Screw my strength,” Says Elena, “Jeremy is my _brother._ He’s my family, Damon. I’m going to go talk to him. You will let me go talk to him.”

She doesn’t command him, and Damon knows what it means.

“On your head be it,” He tells her, “I wouldn’t envy you, right about now. I know what they’re fighting about.”

So this is what she is doing: leaving behind what once kept her safe, reclined on her bed, lost in thinking, as she ventures into the unknown. Every line of the house looks sharper. Jenna’s shadow blurs through the walls. She gets a firm grip on the banister, but nearly cannot manage it. And she catches the tail of their argument as she gets close to the bottom.

“…. _Wouldn’t,_ ” Elijah is saying, “You don’t know what she is like.”

“I grew up with her!” Jeremy says, “”So did Bonnie. It doesn’t matter if you think she would or she wouldn’t, you didn’t see what she was like.”

“What she was _like?_ ” Asks Elijah, “I’ll have you know what she’s _like_ -”

“She’s a martyr,” Jeremy tells him. “You can’t deny it, Elijah. I don’t know what’s going on between you, but Elena would put her lives before hers every single time. If she was that scared about this, then there’s a _reason_ for it. The way that you’re talking, I swear -”

“You shouldn’t,” Elijah says, “Swear. You shouldn’t make promises, not if you’ll break them someday. Your sister taught me that lesson.”

“I _swear,_ ” He says, “That you wish your brother had killed her.”

“ _What_ did you say to me?”

“Look at you,” Jeremy says, “You’re an Original, and here we all thought that you loved her. What if you were Elena - what if you found out your entire life was a lie, so many times in a row that you didn’t even know who you were, anymore? What if you looked yourself in the mirror and made the decision to willingly give up your life, because you cared about someone that much? And then you woke up, and you were this thing no one knew about, and no one could help you with it? You would be scared, and alone, and you’d need that person to be there, right by your side. Instead you’re down here telling me that she hurt you? You need to get over yourself.”

“If you weren’t Elena’s brother,” He tells him, “I would kill you right now.” Somehow, she’s sure that he would. “Listen to me very carefully, Jeremy Gilbert. I’ve been stabbed by daggers before, but those ones could be removed. If you want to talk about what Elena is _like,_ take it up with Elena. I simply have nothing to say.”

“Take what up with me?” Asks Elena. She has reached the end of the stairs. She looks past Elijah, up at her brother, sees the seeing bloom in him.

“You’re okay?” He asks.

“I’m okay.”

“Thank _God,_ ” He tells her, “Elena, you said things to me, I was _worried_ about you, and no one would say anything, I - Sorry,” He says, “I was worried.”

“So was I,” Says Elena, “I’m part angel now. It’s kind of a lot to get used to.”

She tries for a smile, and yet Elijah is here. He will not give her his warmth. In fact, he is giving her nothing, radiating his anger, his breaking, at her. _I know what you did,_ says his stance. _I know what you’ve made out of me, and I will not be that man._ It is fine, thinks Elena - he is not a man, anyways. No more than she is, or Damon, or anyone else in the world. He is Elijah, and he does not break promises. He promised her once that he’d keep them safe, and then he’d showed up in her room. He had let himself in through the window. There’d been no knock, just _Elijah,_ throwing the covers back, pulling her onto her feet. _Six days,_ he’d told her, _Is more than enough time to act as if you are a widow._ She had not realized it then, but he’d put her on the list. Not her name, thinks Elena, but _her -_ a girl who looked like Tatia had looked, that he could not stop looking at. He had waited three hours for her to come back up the drive, and his eyes had kept towards the clock. He would not have told her about it, but he’d have gone searching for her, if her slimness had not reappeared. The first time he thought that he loved her, Elijah called it a burden, and he hadn’t placed it on her. But it had been well enough - she would not have known what to do with his love, if he had confessed it to her. She could only stand to be loved by so many people, if she was going to die. He’d lain clothes out for her on her bed. He’d chosen tight ones, as if he had known how desperately she needed armor, and when she had gone back to face him, he’d smiled like he wasn’t sure.

_I’m not acting like I’m a widow,_ she’d told him. _We’d have never got married, you know?_ They had stood at the lake house and talked about it, his arms around her in a blanket; but those promises had been false. Marrying wasn’t their way, and she had known how it killed him to even _suggest_ that it could be. She would have to be one of them first, and he’d not have done that to her. Not’ve been able to look at himself, if he did. She wouldn’t have taken that from her, the tenuous peace he had found. But he was a ripper, Elena had thought to herself, and Elijah - despite being the oldest of them, the one who had lived with the most and had the most reason to turn - Elijah would _never_ be that. No one could make him unless he did it himself. _Elena,_ he’d said, once she’d stopped looking bitter, _Forgive me if this is - out of style, but I would very much like to hug you. Is that still the preferred human method of comforting?_ She hadn’t been able to hold in a torrent of laughter, and like any good torrent, she’d felt it cleanse out her soul, unclog the pipes of her aching heart until joy was blooming in her. Not immediate joy, but a someday-soon happiness that told her it _would_ be alright. _Hugs are fine,_ she had told him, not wanting to admit that his _being there_ was enough. _You don’t have to ask, though, Elijah. It’s just a hug._ She had shrugged - hopefully nonchalantly - to prove her point, but he’d still been cautious with her, giving Elena every chance to tell him that he should stop. He’d advanced on her slowly, like a stalker catching its prey, and for the smallest snippet her nerves had kicked in as she’d realized that the last time he’d gotten this close, Elijah’d been trying to kill her. But his arms were a haven, a place where she could be safe, and she let herself sink into them, feeling his shirt underneath her, no doubt of an expensive fabric. She bunched her hands up in it, felt it wrinkle where her fingers touched, and _liked_ that it ruined the image. _Elena,_ he’d told her, _You are incredibly brave._

_Brave for a human,_ she’d told him, sniffling back a sob.

_No,_ he had told her, _Just brave._

Now he won’t look at her face. There are parallels here, thinks Elena, to every time _she_ had looked at herself, those seven long years she was gone. All that she wants is to know him - still, even more so, for knowing enough. He called her, once, an enigma; because she wasn’t Katherine or Tatia or anyone else save for her, but she thought the same thing of him. She knew the Original - maybe, finally, after everything - but still, she yearned for the man.

“Elena?” He asks.

“You can see ghosts,” Says Elena. She thinks that she knew this before, but the details of it escape her. “Damon said you -”

“It isn’t your business,” Elijah bites out, and Elena huffs into the air.

“Jeremy,” She says, “Tell me.”

“I -”

“I’ll _handle_ Elijah,” She tells him. It makes him go more still, more quiet and angry and wronged; but Elena won’t do this again. “I was out of the loop for seven years on this. I’m here now. Please let me help.”

“I - Okay,” Says her brother, “I will. I just - Give me a minute?”

“Sure,” Says Elena, “I’ll wait.”

She will. She will stand right here in the kitchen and _make_ him see that she means it. She is Elena, and she will not leave. She’ll let nobody live her life for her, if that’s what it can be called. While Jeremy swallows, she lets her gaze stray to him, and it cuts into her like a knife. _No,_ he had told her, _Just brave._ When he’d said it, she’d let herself think of a world wherein it might be true; that she, Elena, the coward who hadn’t saved Stefan, could be referred to as ‘brave’. If Elijah believed it, Elena had thought, it had to have merit at least. He was an _Original._ He’d seen more of the world than the world had seen of humanity, almost. And he didn’t judge her; she’d seen that inside of him, too. He didn’t judge her for having to choose between Stefan and Damon. Didn’t hate her for making that choice. So she’d bunched her nails harder in, pressed herself closer, and felt him come up and surround her. He’d swayed her from side to side, allowed one hand to creep up and brush off a trail of salt tears. _You will be fine,_ he had told her. _Not today,_ he’d amended, _But Elena, sweet Elena, I want you to know that you will be._ Elena had told him,

_I know._

And then she had said,

_I chose Damon._

_Yes,_ Elijah’d agreed. _You chose him a long time ago. Don’t think less of yourself over that; it takes time to realize these things. They are complicated, hearts. I am a thousand years old and some days mine still hardly works like my mother once told me it should._

_You had a mother?_ She’d asked him.

_Later,_ Elijah had said.

“I saw her,” Says Jeremy, then. “Your ghost. I didn’t believe it - Even after you drank, I still didn’t believe it. Bonnie would hardly talk to me, after that.”

“Are you -”

“Yeah,” He says, “Yeah, Bonnie’s fine. It helps that you’re - you know,” He says, “Not one of them. She’s gonna forgive you, Elena.”

“I don’t want her forgiveness,” She says. Snaps it, more like, but it’s _true._ “Bonnie’s not in charge of my decisions.”

“I get it,” He tells her, “But you know how she is. She just wants to be able to -”

“What?” Elena asks, “Love me? Then you can just tell her to love me.”

“Your ghost,” He says, backtracking, “‘Lena, your ghost really scared me. You _said_ things to me, I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You’re here now,” She tells him, “Go on.”

She is angry at him about Bonnie - _No,_ she thinks, not _at him._ But she is angry. She is angry and she is tired. She wants to be _fine_ for a change.

“It told me you’re going to die,” Says her brother.

“Again?” Asks Elena. He shakes his head on a tear.

“Don’t say things like that,” He tells her, “Both of us know it’s not fair.”

“I never asked if it was,” Says Elena. “You know that it isn’t about that. Look, I -”

“I don’t want this,” He says. “Come on, let’s not have it out.”

“No,” Says Elena, suddenly sure, “No, we’re going to, Jer. I _know_ that you care about me, but we need to talk about this.”

“While he’s here?” Jeremy asks. Elena gulps in a breath.

“Let me make one thing clear to you,” She says, “Elijah is part of my heart. Elijah’s a _part_ of me, Jer. Anything that I can say, he can hear. And anything you’d say to me, he can hear. I wouldn’t be me without him, and I trust him with all of our lives. Unconditionally.”

“Okay, then,” Jeremy tells her. “Let’s have it out then, Elena. I don’t agree with how Bonnie’s been dealing with everything, but you and I both know she has a good point. I love Caroline, but I’ve known her forever, and the rest of them? You say that turning doesn’t take any of you away, but we’ve all seen differently. I’m not saying I wouldn’t support you, but after everything that we’ve been through? I can see why some people wouldn’t.”

“And I don’t understand why you’d be okay with that. There’s only one situation where I’d even do it, and it would be keeping you safe. I would do it to keep you all _safe._ Bonnie can hate that that’s what has to be done, but if she wants to hate me for doing it, when you’re all the reason I am -”

“Her grandmother died,” He says, “Because of vampiric obsession.”

“Oh, so you’re blaming Damon,” She tells him. “I’m sure that killing Bonnie’s grandmother and irreparably damaging our relationship was exactly what he intended.”

“I -”

“He was in love,” Says Elena, “I won’t blame him for being in love. I wouldn’t blame anybody for that. It isn’t Damon’s _fault_ that he was treated so badly.”

“That doesn’t excuse it,” He tells her. “The horrible things that he’s done. How can you just look past all of that? He’s _killed_ other people, Elena. He’s ripped them apart for a _laugh._ ”

“He was struggling,” She says, “And lonely. He’d given up on himself. You don’t know him, Jeremy, that _isn’t_ the person he is.”

“But he was,” He tells her, “That person.”

“Yeah,” She says, “Because Stefan wasn’t a ripper? Because _Bonnie_ was merciful towards them, and gave them a chance to do better?”

“She did,” Says her brother. “It might not be Damon’s fault that he wasn’t the person he is, but it’s his fault he failed Bonnie’s test. If he honestly didn’t realize that what he was doing was wrong, then Elena, he doesn’t deserve you.”

“Don’t tell me that,” Says Elena. “You don’t know him at all.”

“Everyone knows him,” Jeremy says.

“Then what does Alaric think about this?” She asks him. “Oh, I know, nothing. Because you won’t mention it to him, because you know he thinks the exact same way _I_ do about it.”

“He wants you to be alright,” Says her brother, “And not have to live with this bullshit, Elena. The way that you’re living is _bullshit!”_

“Jeremy,” She says, much more calm than she feels, “You don’t know how I lived. You want me to say what was bullshit? Seven years not knowing who I was, running away and living with _Isobel -_ that’s what was bullshit. Making that choice, to lose who I was, to not _be_ the person I was - that’s what was bullshit. And the only person who fought me on it was Damon. You want to know why that was? It was because he couldn’t stand to see me so lost, and so hurt, and so pained. He wanted me to be happy. He didn’t care if I loathed him for that. And maybe that means that he’s not a good person, but I think it means that he loved me enough to care about all of that. The way I was going to feel.”

“Bonnie cared,” Jeremy says.

“Bonnie went through with it, though. Don’t lie to me, Jeremy, she wanted me to get out. She thought I was in it too deep; she probably went to sleep _every night,_ terrified over me - deciding to be something she’d decided that she couldn’t love, as if I wasn’t even myself. She was wrong to have done it, and I was wrong not to have listened to Damon, and - I’m wrong about everything. But I’m here now, and I know who I am -”

“Do you?” Jeremy asks her.

“No,” Says Elena, “But I know what I have to do. You’re not fighting this out without me. Not this time. Not anymore.”

She thinks that she gets it, now. _Nobody_ wanted her there. Still, she thinks, he is her brother. It is her job to protect him. If anyone in the world understands that, she knows that it will be Elijah. And he will not stop her on this - it is always, has always been _her_ choice. It shows in his eyes, and he doesn’t hide it from her. It gutted him, seeing her dead. She was everything supple and softness, to him. Everything shocking and brilliant. Vampires know, more than most people do, how the brilliance drains out of a corpse. She had been pale to him, not the warm tones of Tatia’s skin. And every word that she’d spoken - for those hours, they had been lost, robbing him of the safety and hope they’d provided. He’d looked at her and _remembered,_ she thinks, the first time his eyes fell on her. She had looked just like Katarina, but her scent had been so much more subtle. Foolishly, Elijah’d assumed that it hid some new, dangerous edge. _Elena -_ that’s what the humans had named her. Even then, as his weakness for them had reached tentatively in a naive attempt to consume him, he’d thought that it suited her. It was kinder, more true than the others had been, and the girl had not lied to him. When he had asked her why she was still wearing vervain, the doppleganger’d been silent. _Good,_ he had thought, _Let her cower. She has no hold over me._

But even then, it was a lie, and Elijah Mikaelson had loathed it. It wasn’t the lying, he’d told himself - such things were necessary, when trying to protect one’s family. No, he’d decided, it was the fact that she’d somehow added _herself_ to that list, and that, inexplicably, she’d added him to her own. He’d convinced himself that it was phase on her face - she was young, he’d reminded himself, and they said that youth knew no pain. Never mind that Elena’d seen more in seventeen years than Elijah had in one thousand. Her caring for him was stupidity at its finest. Then again, he always _had_ been one for that. The finest suits. The finest hotel suites. The finest wines from the oldest cellars, telling him, like the ghosts of lost summers, how human he had once been. He’d known what it felt like, losing one’s family. And though it would take him years, if he so chose to succumb, from that very first meeting he’d known what Elena could teach him; the way to love someone, again. _We don’t need to be lonely,_ the thrum of her heartbeat had told him. _We could have each other, someday._

_Elijah,_ she thinks, as she races her way through the vision, and thinks that she knows what it means. _We have each other right now._ And they’ve had each other before - if not in that way, in every way that counts. They have had the trust of one another. The mutual giving of words, and the accepting that sometimes, they must be broken, no matter how noble one is. She blinks her way back to her brother. He stares at her startled. Time might have stopped moving outside.

“Elena?” He asks her. She shakes her head, cutting him off.

“Tell me,” She says, “How I’m going to die.”

“Elena,” He tells her, “I can’t. I’m sorry. You told me I can’t.”

“Then why -”

“Because we can stop it,” He says. His eyes look so sad, in that moment. So angry at her for her sins. _I’m a nephilim,_ thinks Elena. _I don’t have any sins._ None except hurting Elijah; loving and leaving and breaking the men that she loves. It is wrong of her, doing this to them. It was wronger of her to die. _Angels can’t die,_ she thinks. _The only thing we do is turn ourselves into ash._ But she thinks that she sees what Jeremy cannot tell her. _It is them,_ he would say, if she forced him. _The fire you start, you’re going to start it for them._ She gets a glimpse of that future, though it is nowhere near clear. The edge of a desk, her nails biting into it hard. An open pagoda, and Klaus’s sharp smile. A wail coming out through the flames. With no one to catch her, the ground seems much farther away.

“You stupid girl,” Elijah says, right into her dark straightness, “You thought I would just let you _fall?”_

_The first time I met you,_ she says with her eyes, _You ripped off somebody’s head. What did you think I would think?_

“Elijah,” She says, “Let me fall.”

“No,” He tells her, his voice a concrete waterfall. “I promised you I’d keep you safe. You’ve already made me betray you; let me pretend to have honor.”

“You do,” Says Elena, “You _never_ had to pretend.”

It is one of their quiet moments. She likes it, to hear him this low, where nobody else in the world can. Damon is upstairs and worried, fretting in place and fixing to shatter a glass. Jeremy’s there in the foreground. She told him she’s going to _die._ But it is in those hours, still. They tell her it will not be easy; there is much that they need to address. For all that she hates it, Damon is trying for her. For all that she will not resign herself to it, there was a time when he didn’t; when his hurting her was so crystalline an assumption that she’d had no question about it for seven years in a row. And Elijah - _Elijah,_ whose name had been on her list, whose lips had made her a promise - had put Niklaus above her. She doesn’t blame him for it, but she sees the blight of transgression, a wound stretched over his soul. It’s not pure, she thinks, not unmarred, but it is salvageable. All of them; everyone, is.

“There isn’t one part of you,” Says Elena, “That I doubted for even a second.”

Elijah breaks his grip on her. That is what makes him cursed.

The fire has started already, and it smells, to her, like kerosene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, four songs that I blasted on repeat while writing this chapter! 
> 
> _Pang_ by Caroline Polachek
> 
> _Undo_ by Transviolet
> 
> _Foreigner's God_ by Hozier, 
> 
> And, finally, 
> 
> _And It Breaks My Heart_ by LÉON


End file.
